


Wolf and cub (Or how small children became the new must have missing nin accessory)

by Dissenter



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU will fuck with your head, Accidental cult acquisition, All Jounin are crazy, All Uchiha are pyros, All the Gossip, Ancient Temples, And Itachi, Angst and Humor, Big Brother Itachi, Brainwashed minions don't get the minimum wage, Death Traps, Especially Kakashi, Everything is Danzo's fault, Fluff and Humor, Gaara is like a cat, Gossip, Gossipy ninja, Honest, Icha Icha is not an appropriate reading primer, It's like the opposite of Naruto's superpower, Kabuto is an adorable murder child, Kakashi has no non-shinobi life skills, Kakashi is not fit to raise children, Kisame is in over his head, Konoha is not a nice place, Mad Science, Missing-Nin, Naruto is a menace, Naruto will do anything for ramen, Ninja Pirates, Orochimaru is so proud, Pen Pals, Pirates, Politics, Poor Life Choices, Really useless summons contracts, Sai's superpower is insulting people, Sasuke does not have stockholm syndrome, Shizune is so done with everything, Slightly homicidal big brother Shin, Tenzo is teaching social skills out of self help books, Tequila and other bad influences, Zabuza did not sign up for this shit, cute cuddly and with an unfortunate tendency to leave dead things on the floor, he tries, it's all about appearences, kakashi kidnaps Naruto, mysterious treasure, parental Kakashi, sort of, unemployment, what could possibly go wrong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2018-06-07 16:44:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 47,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6814000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dissenter/pseuds/Dissenter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slightly unhinged Kakashi finds two year old Naruto being beaten up, and decides the best course of action is to kidnap him and go on the run. Hilarity ensues. Other ninjas follow Kakashi's example. Zabuza has no idea how he ended up giving all these Konoha ninja parenting classes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's not kidnapping it's a rescue

**Author's Note:**

> For future reference this version of konoha is nastier than canon in a number of ways because the Sandaime got hit on the head during the kyuubi attack and Danzo is therefore responsible for much of the village's actual functioning. The effects are subtle but significant, and include a worsening of anbu missions which acts as a contributory factor in driving Kakashi over the edge. I will probably go into more detail later.

_“Cubs under four if you steal them they’re yours.” (Old Hatake saying from the warring clans era)_

It was a spur of the moment decision really. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Twelve hours later, after he finally got the hunter nins off his trail and had some time to think about it, he could admit it probably hadn’t been the best thought through decision he’d ever made. Still he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it.

“Kashi ni-san, where are we going?” The blond two year old scrunched up his face adorably, banishing Kakashi’s doubts.

“Maa Naruto-chan, we’re going on an adventure on the road of life.” He was rewarded with a smile like sunshine. He would burn the world down for that smile, stealing the kyuubi jinchuriki and going missing nin were nothing when weighed against Naruto’s happpiness. He suppressed a growl at the thought of the incident that caused all this.

_ANBU Inu was back from yet another assassination mission. They were getting more fucked up by the day, and he could barely keep from shaking. He was in no state to report in at headquarters, and the thought of returning to his cold, bare apartment made him feel empty inside. He decided to check in on sensei’s son instead. Remind himself of what he was protecting, that there was still something good and innocent in this village, even with the situation as it was._

_He took the rooftops, the streets were crowded for the Kyuubi festival. Had it really been two years already? He froze as he reached the orphanage. Were those civilians beating up a kid. They were. Inu caught a flash of blond hair and frightened blue eyes and saw red. They were hurting Minato sensei’s son, they were hurting his baby brother. He was going to fucking kill them._

_He didn’t, quite kill them in the end. He still had enough self-restraint not to kill civilians. Even ones who deserved it. Well not in front of Naruto anyway. Killing people in front of babies was baaad. Kakashi was pretty sure about that. Lots of people said so at least. Anyway, they were still breathing when he left, so it totally didn’t count as murder._

_Anyway those bastards weren’t the important thing. The important thing was the adorable blonde puppy-child he’d rescued from them. His sheer delight when Inu picked him up and carried him away to his apartment. No kid should be that happy over a simple hug. Kakashi’s childhood might have read like the backstory for a comic book supervillain, but even he’d got hugs when he was two. He paced his apartment, Naruto still held tightly in his arms._

_He’d obeyed orders. They’d said he should stay away from Naruto to avoid drawing undue attention, and that considering his state of mental health he probably wasn’t the best person to be around small children anyway. They may have had a point. But, that argument was only valid as long as Naruto was better off where he was. He wasn’t. Obviously. Even Kakashi could see that. He had some thinking to do._

_Clearly Konoha could not be trusted to look after Naruto. He’d tried trusting them and now he could feel the boy’s ribs through his worn out T-Shirt. He continued to pace. It took him a while to realise that the growling echoing through the apartment was him, he hadn’t registered quite how angry he was, and he had to force himself to relax when he realised he was holding Naruto too tight._

_Those fuckers. Minato sensei had died, to protect Konoha, had sealed a demon into his own baby son, who was now the only thing protecting the village from annihilation and they hurt him, the neglected him, they whispered, and hated, and beat up a two year old in a dark alley. Actually it brought back memories of his father, right before the suicide, the way the village turned on someone who’d fought and bled for them, the way they’d turned on his six year old son who’d never put a foot wrong. They’d been bastards back then as well. In fact right now he was struggling to find any particular good points about Konoha. There were the back to back ANBU missions, with murder and torture as a staple, there were the dead friends on the memorial stone, and there were the fucking bastard villagers who’d never earned a drop of the blood spilled by him and his comrades since they were children._

_It was getting worse too. Not just the ANBU missions, although those had been getting bloodier, everything. Maybe if the Sandaime were still… but he was… and things just kept getting worse. They were talking about lowering the graduation age again, more children to be sent to war. There was less and less space to refuse missions, to take a break, to breathe. The military police had instituted a city wide curfew, for reasons that were spurious even for the Uchiha. And the shinobi laws were subtly being rewritten year by year, to leave less space for humanity. God knows what he would have become if his rules obsessed child self, had followed the current code._

_So to recap, he had Naruto. Konoha hurt Naruto. Konoha wanted him to stay away from Naruto and kill people for them. He didn’t even like Konoha that much anymore. Minato sensei made him promise to take care of Naruto. Kakashi could barely breathe as years of conditioning snapped under the strain, and he came to an unthinkable conclusion. Konoha could go fuck themselves._

_It had taken him approximately ten minutes to pack up his equipment into sealing scrolls, along with the few personal effects he couldn’t live without. It had taken fifteen to work up the guts to slice a vertical line through the leaf symbol on his hitae-ate, years of indoctrination don’t fall away easily. He’d left the ANBU mask behind but kept the uniform. ANBU gear was good quality stuff, no point wasting it. Naruto had fallen asleep in his arms while he was thinking and it took only a simple genjutsu to keep him that way as he sneaked out of the village. By the time anyone realised he was gone he had a six hour headstart._

It was shocking how liberating it felt. For the first time in his whole life, he was outside of a chain of command. He was his own boss. He could go where he liked, do what he liked, and best of all. No more paperwork. Ever. It was awesome.

Well it was awesome up until the point he discovered Naruto wasn’t properly toilet trained yet. Then it was less awesome. Naruto peed on him. He had limited success fixing it. Swatting him on the nose with a newspaper didn’t work. Apparently children weren’t like puppies. Clearly he had some catching up to do in terms of parenting skills. Ah well. He was a genius, he’d figure it out.

When they finally managed to lose the hunter nins, Kakashi decided it might be a good idea to stop by a town and grab some supplies. Apparently small children don’t eat ration bars. It had taken a good couple of hours of alternating cajoling with coercion to come to that conclusion. In the end he’d given in and decided to go shopping.

It was while they were in town that they came up against their first major roadblock. Naruto looked nothing like him. By this point Naruto was quite happily calling him Ni-san, but apparently Naruto’s obvious affection wasn’t enough to keep them from looking seriously suspicious. Which was why the two of them ended up hiding out in a cheap motel, while Kakashi bleached Naruto’s hair over the sink. It was amazing what a difference it made. Naruto still didn’t look that much like him facially, but changing one obvious attention grabbing feature to match was apparently enough for most people to discount that. Especially with most of Kakashi’s face covered. Hmm, maybe he should get Naruto a mask when he was older.

Shopping was… hard. He’d never really done much of it. He got his uniforms from supplies, and while he did know how to do food shopping he had no idea what small children ate. He ended up flirting with the old ladies in the supermarket until they helped him. Apparently it was cute that he was trying so hard to take good care of his little brother while his parents were on a business trip. He’d used a henge to disguise himself but he still wasn’t sure how they had failed to notice he was a ninja. Civilians were really unobservant. How did they not get killed?

Kakashi put that question aside in favour of focusing on the baby development books one particularly persistant old biddy had made him buy. Evidently Naruto was old enough to toilet train. This was good news. He read on. Children need exercise, well that could be covered by training, lots of physical contact from primary caregiver, he could manage that, he had no intention of putting Naruto down any time soon, healthy balanced diet, he made a quick note for further research. He continued, apparently it helped with healthy child development to read children bedtime stories. He considered for a moment and then smiled. Well he had that covered. He had every volume of icha icha ever published. They could start at the beginning and work their way through together. It must be fate of something. After all. His godfather was the author.


	2. Please state your employment history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi embarks on a life of crime. Naruto uses his powers of adorability for evil, and back in Konoha, the jounin gossip like old ladies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a little under two weeks since Kakashi kidnapped Naruto, and the consequences of his actions are still becoming clear.

Kakashi had often wondered why so many missing nin turned to a life of crime. Now he knew. He had never realized how much he’d taken a steady income for granted until he… didn’t have one. Money was a problem. Kakashi hadn’t had a chance to visit the bank before he left, so he only had as much cash as he’d been able to put his hands on in a hurry, and it didn’t go nearly as far as he’d expected it to. Naruto, adorable though he might be was a money pit. Kakashi had never seen someone eat so much ramen in one sitting. He still wasn’t entirely sure where such a small child could be putting it. Plus there was all the crap that you apparently had to buy for small children, clothes, toys, plastic sippy cups. It had only taken two weeks for the money to run out.

So now he needed to find employment, which was… unexpectedly difficult. He’d never had to look for work before. He’d got his first job at five and hadn’t changed it since. He wasn’t entirely sure how the civilian job market even worked. Was there some kind of central employment room, like the mission room but with less assassinations and more accountancy.

He needed the employment but it didn’t take him long to come to an unfortunate realisation. He had no references, no qualifications, and no experience, for any civilian job that paid properly. In fact as he ran through all the things that he knew how to do he came to the slightly depressing conclusion that he had almost no life skills that didn’t relate to killing in some way. He couldn’t cook, his maths skills were more suited to calculating trajectories than balancing a budget, his handwriting was atrocious, and his people skills were worse. He sighed. Mercenary work it was then.

He’d managed to find a job by surreptitiously asking around. Some merchant wanted his caravan guarded and was too cheap to hire village ninja. Interestingly enough Kakashi was still getting paid more than he had as a Konoha jounin. The village’s cut must be bigger than he’d thought. The best thing about the guard job though, was the fact that he could take Naruto with him. If he’d taken an assassination mission, or a theft mission, he’d have had to leave Naruto somewhere to avoid complications. On a caravan guard mission though, no one would mind having a kid tag along, hell there might even be other kids on the trip. Naruto might have a chance to make some friends. Speaking of Naruto, Kakashi looked around for the little ball of sunshine and panicked. Naruto was gone.

After panicking, pacing, forcing himself to calm down, and trying to put himself into the mind of a hungry Naruto, Kakashi found him at the ramen stand, there was a crowd. It was actually a slightly impressive sight. He watched as Naruto looked imploringly at yet another bystander, and managed to swindle them into buying him another bowl of ramen. It was amazing how he was able to project an aura of starving desperation while surrounded by mountains of bowls he’d just emptied. Kakashi felt a warm buzz of pride deep inside his chest, such an adorable little con artist. Little Naruto was clearly following in the oldest of shinobi traditions. Look harmless and get other people to give you stuff. Maybe training Naruto would be easier than he thought.

Konoha’s council was having _discussions._ They had been having them for quite a while. The jounin population of the village was starting to get curious, and in the finest of Shinobi traditions they had started gossiping about it. Clearly something major had happened. What with the Anbu being called out, and the village on lockdown, and the council being all secretive. Although to be honest that last one didn’t mean all that much these days. They’d been secretive and paranoid since the Kyuubi attack. But still, something had clearly happened in the last couple of days to put them even more on edge than usual.

It was Anko who first pointed out what everyone else had failed to notice.

“You know I haven’t seen Hatake, around in the last few days. “ The lounge that had previously been filled with chatter went suddenly silent as the gears turned in people’s heads.

“What are you saying? You think he’s dead.” Genma asked curiously.

“If he was dead would the village be on lockdown? No, I don’t think he’s dead. I think he’s done a runner.” Anko replied with all the relish of someone who was ahead of the curve on village gossip. “Now you didn’t hear it from me, but the council have called up the records of all Hatake’s psych evals, and you know they don’t do that unless something’s gone seriously wrong.” Everyone took a moment to digest that information.

“You know the police force has been called to cordon off Hatake’s street.” Shisui decided to throw in his two cents. “I figured there was just some kind of justsu damage from one of his and Gai’s challenges, but if Hatake really did do a runner.”

“Then they’ll want to go over his apartment to see how long he’s been planning this.” Raido finished, “Yeah that would make sense, but still. Kakashi, go missing nin. I wouldn’t have pegged him for the type.”

“Maybe he finally lost it. We all know he’s not exactly stable.” Genma pointed out.

“They wouldn’t put the village on lock down just for Hatake going missing nin though. I mean it would be a problem yeah, but they didn’t even pull this when Orochimaru left.” Hayate argued. “There’s something bigger going on than one jounin going nuts, and doing a runner.” Suddenly the door opened.

“How about one jounin going nuts and stealing the Kyuubi?” Asked the new arrival Ibiki. “I just got back from interviewing the jinchuriki’s protection detail, and according to them he hasn’t been seen since the night Hatake disappeared.”

“So Kakashi really did go missing nin then?” Genma asked but the whole room waited expectantly for the answer.

“That’s what it looks like yes. Hatake’s gone, there’s no sign of a struggle, all of his weapons and personal items are missing, and his ANBU mask was left on the kitchen table.” Ibiki took a moment to appreciate the stunned silence that hit the jounin lounge.

“Shit. I did not see that coming.” Genma muttered.

“So you’re thinking he took the Kyuubi?” Raido asked, all business.

“Well the kid is missing, Hatake’s missing, they both went on the same night, and we all know who Hatake’s sensei was. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.” Anko rolled her eyes. “And yes Ibiki we all know exactly who the kid is, it doesn’t take a genius to work that out either. He’s the bloody spitting image.”

“So what happens now?” Hayate asked.

“Well the Anbu teams tracking him have lost the trail. We have no idea where he might be headed. We have no idea if he even knows where he’s headed. Right now there’s nothing we can do except put him in the bingo books, with an “apprehend if possible” notice.” Was Ibiki’s reply.

“Apprehend, not kill?” Shisui looked at Ibiki questioningly.

“He hasn’t actually injured any Konoha ninja, and considering the probability that this is the result of some sort of psychotic break, the council is of the opinion that it’s worth at least trying to see if he can be salvaged.” Everyone nodded at that. They all knew how keen the council was on conserving resources where possible, and high level ninja were valuable resources.

It had been different under the Sandaime. Not that anyone said it out loud of course, after all, officially they still were under the Sandaime. The trouble was the Sandaime hadn’t been the same since the Kyuubi attack, and according to the med nin that had treated him that night, there had been a blow to the head and some sort of brain damage. Officially he had made a full recovery. Unofficially he was now no longer fit to lead. He probably wasn’t even fit to serve as a shinobi, but with the Yondaime dead, and half the village destroyed they’d needed his reputation. Had needed to convince the other villages that they were still under a respected, experienced leader. So the Sandaime was Hokage again, and Danzo and the council did their level best to convince the other villages that he was still as sharp as ever.

Maybe the other villages bought it, but the Konoha nin knew that the Sandaime was incapacitated, and they knew who was running the village in his place, Danzo. It probably was the best option they had. Danzo might be a bastard, but he was one hell of a ninja, and he knew how to organise the village’s forces and budget. And it wasn’t like Danzo had a Hokage’s absolute authority. The power balance in the village had shifted and Danzo wasn’t the only one to have gained power by it. The Ino-Chika-Cho triad had the lockdown on the interrogation department and the regular jounin divisions, the civilian council had almost completely taken over taxation and city planning, and the med nins were a law unto themselves. But Danzo was the primary co-ordinator of village resources and factions, his grip on Anbu grew tighter every day, and on bad days he was the only living person the Sandaime recognised or would listen to. And so Danzo more than anyone else was in charge of Konoha, and it showed. It showed in the changes in law that made recruitment to the shinobi forces easier, and resignation harder, in the missions that grew ever more distasteful, in the academy curriculum that was stripped down and intensified to accelerate graduation. It showed, and people didn’t like it. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Hatake had snapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear the jounin have been kept out of the loop for operational security. The people who've been chasing Kakashi are Anbu, and they are too busy trying to keep a lid on everything to gossip in the jounin lounge. The regular jounin on the other hand have lots of time to gossip because with the village on lockdown they've got nothing else to do. Enough time has passed now, that they're easing up on operational security and thus juicy tidbits of gossip have been finding their way to the jounin lounge.
> 
> People in the jounin lounge during this chapter are Anko, Genma, Raido, Hayate, Shisui and Ibiki. Yes I know some of them were in Anbu, but for the sake of the plot they are not in Anbu at the moment, they've either already left, not started yet, or are on some kind of medical leave, whatever sounds most plausible.


	3. Early years education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi has a boring guard job. Naruto is a menace. Icha Icha is not an appropriate reading primer, and while Konoha's council have a tendency to overthink things, that doesn't make them entirely wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few weeks have passed since the last chapter, since then Naruto and Kakashi have bonded, and Konoha has been taken off lockdown, but meetings are still being held about the situation

Three weeks later and Kakashi was remembering why he preferred assassination work. Guard work was fucking boring. It had been three weeks and there hadn’t been so much as a bandit attack. He’d been reduced to playing ninja I-spy with his fellow guards (like regular I-spy, but with more cheating and sabotage), just to keep from falling asleep. At least Naruto was having a good time. There were about twelve children aged between one and six with the caravan, and Naruto was delighted to be surrounded by kids his age that didn’t shun him. In fact it hadn’t taken long for him to prove himself his father’s son and make himself their leader. He swiftly followed this by marshalling his forces into a raid on the kitchen tent in search of cake and ramen, and causing chaos throughout the campsite. When their fellow travellers called Naruto a demon child, it was with rather more justification, and infinitely less malice than Konoha ever had. 

The general consensus was that Naruto was an adorable menace to society, and while people were indulgent, Kakashi decided it was in the best interests of everyone I he found a way to keep Naruto occupied. Besides, training Naruto would be a useful distraction from his own boredom.

Honestly Kakashi wasn’t too clear on early years ninja training. For some reason people had always been reluctant to leave him in charge of children. Still he figured that since Naruto was having no trouble running around, getting into places he shouldn’t, and directing his forces to cause maximum chaos, he already had a handle on the basic principles.

After a couple of hours he gave up on trying to teach him basic taijutsu forms. Naruto was excited enough by the idea, but it turned out he lacked the patience for the practice. It was ok, he was still very small, maybe his attention span would grow as he did. He thought about starting the kid on ninjutsu, then images of the chaos Naruto could cause with a basic wind jutsu, or God forbid a fire jutsu, flooded his mind. He shuddered. Definitely no ninjutsu until Naruto was old enough to learn restraint.

Then Kakashi had an idea. If Naruto was too small and chaotic for practical work, maybe it would do him some good to get a headstart on the theory. He even had a couple of low level theory scrolls tucked in with his things, left over from his long distant genin days. He got the scrolls out and passed them to Naruto.

“If you have any questions about any of it just ask me ok.” Naruto just stared blankly, first at the scrolls, then at him.

“Questions about what niisan?”

“Questions about the stuff written in the scrolls of course.” Naruto just kept up the blank look of incomprehension. A few minutes later a horrible suspicion started to dawn on Kakashi. Naruto couldn’t read yet. Kakashi allowed himself a brief moment to panic. Surely that wasn’t normal, maybe the kyuubi was blocking his reading ability somehow, or what if one of those bastards back at konoha had hit him on the head? What if there was brain damage? No, Naruto seemed perfectly fine otherwise, as far as Kakashi could work out, maybe it was just those bastards back in Konoha, neglecting him, not bothering to teach him. He grabbed the child development book that had recently become his bible, in the hope of finding out how far behind those bastards had put Naruto. “ _Small children normally start learning to read between the ages of three and six, the exact rate of reading comprehension varies from child to child.”_ Kakashi breathed a sigh of relief. Ok good Naruto wasn’t behind. In fact if he got Naruto started now, he would actually be ahead. Kakashi grinned underneath his mask.

Two hours later, and the two of them were sat with a book, running through the meanings of the symbols. Kakashi’s child rearing book said that children learned to read best, from reading books, and Kakashi had just the series.

“And this word says “bosoms””

“What are bosoms, Kakashi niisan” Naruto had such an adorable inquiring mind. Kakashi was so proud. Information gathering was a valuable skill for a shinobi.

“Bosoms are the cushiony pillows of delight that grace the chests of the fairer sex?” Kakashi smiled distantly, at the thought of remembered delights.

“Huh? Why are you smiling like that niisan”

“When you are older you’ll understand.”

...

Konoha’s council was in an uproar. They had just convened for their third meeting regarding the Kakashi situation, and still no answers were forthcoming.

“And we’re definitely sure he took the jinchuuriki?” Koharu was still hoping that part would turn out to be a bad dream. No such luck.

“Yes we’re very, very sure.” Fugaku replied. “We investigated fully. The Jinchuuriki is gone, Hatake is gone, there is a known connection, and there are three witnesses who saw them together the night Hatake disappeared. We’re sure.”

“And we still don’t have any further insight on why none of this was flagged as a possibility on his psych profile?” Shikaku enquired.

“No. Nothing we have indicates any particular predisposition towards kidnapping. I mean we have him down as unstable, but he’s a jounin, worse, he’s Anbu. It’s practically a requirement. Certainly there wasn’t anything to indicate this.” Inoichi was doing a very good job not sounding defensive, which was impressive, considering the fact that it was the psych nin’s responsibility to catch these things before they happened. Then Hiashi cleared his throat.

“I may have some insight.” Everyone turned to look. Hiashi just smiled serenely at them, with all the self-satisfied smugness of someone who’s figured out something that ought to be obvious. Danzo broke first.

“Care to share with the class?” He said dryly.

“You’re all looking at this wrong. You’re all looking at _Kakashi,_ checking hispsych profiles, his mission reports, trying to find some indication of what he was going to do.”

“Well it was Kakashi that did it. Unless you think the two year old is the mastermind.” Koharu pointed out. The whole room gained the distinct impression that Hiashi was rolling his eyes. It was kind of hard to tell with the Hyuuga, but there was just something in his expression.

“I’m saying that you’re looking at _Kakashi_ when you should be looking at _Hatake._ ” It was beneath the dignity of Konoha’s council members to bash their heads against the table, but more than one of them seriously considered it.

“You think it’s a clan issue?” Shikaku grasped the implications fastest.

“The Hatake may have dwindled over the years but they are still a shinobi clan. And as everyone knows Ninja clans have… traditions. Some more unsavoury than others.” Everyone in the room carefully failed to point out the Hyuuga’s own unsavoury tradition. “During the warring clans era, which was not so long ago as many people like to think, certain practices were carried out by some clans, and just because those, practices, may have ceased after the founding of the village that doesn’t mean that the values that encouraged them have also died out.”

“You’re talking about child stealing.” Fugaku cut to the chase with characteristic bluntness. “Disgraceful business that.”

“Oh and child extermination policies were so much more humane?” Tsume snapped back at him, with all the viciousness of a clan that had done their own fair share of cub stealing back before Konoha’s founding.

“At least we didn’t raise kids to fight against their own flesh and blood.”

“No you’d rather they never grew up at all.”

“Silence.” Danzo thundered. “Let us return to the matter in hand. Hiashi, you were saying?” Hiashi waited a few moments before continuing.

“Without making any moral judgement on the morality of child stealing, I simply wish to point out that the Hatake as a clan were known for the practice. I believe the saying went “cubs under four, if you steal them they’re yours.” Kakashi, was raised Hatake, with Hatake traditions, and Hatake attitudes, and Hatake bedtime stories. It is known that many Shinobi fall back on the comfort of familiar things when under stress, and that includes clan law and convention. By clan law, _his_ clan law, if Kakashi wanted a child he had a right to steal them from an enemy, and Hatake’s psych reports do show a growing level of disaffection with Konoha. It might not be enough on its own but if we combine it with Fugaku’s report on the actions of the civilian witnesses…” He trailed off meaningfully.

“Minato did practically raise him. It is likely he saw the kid as pack. If he saw the kid being hurt it would have kicked his protective instincts into overdrive, and everyone knows wolves will do anything to protect the pack’s cubs.” Tsume said consideringly.

“And as clan head his first legal responsibility would have been to protect the best interests of his clan.” Fugaku added grudgingly.

“Right so the conclusion we’ve come to is that clan history needs to be taken into account when doing psych evals.” Homura summarised.

“And that we need to remain aware that the values of clans are not necessarily the same as those of the village.” Danzo added, with a sidelong look at Fugaku. Shikaku decided to end the meeting before things got nasty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The council meeting includes the clan heads, because in this version of Konoha they have a lot more power, due to the Hokage's weakness. People in the room are, Koharu, Fugaku, Shikaku, Inoichi, Hiashi, Danzo, Tsume, and Homura. Choza is not present b/c he's on a mission and trusting Inoichi, and Shikaku to speak for him. Shibi, is present, but isn't talking. Why, because without further information it is useless to speculate on the situation.  
> And yes Kakashi has no idea about normal rates of child development. He's genuinely worried about Naruto's lack of reading prowess, because he thinks most kids already know how by his age. Yes the childcare book has become Kakashi's new bible, it is already looking a bit worn and dog eared. It will most likely have to be rebound and repaired several times over the course of this fic.


	4. How to make friends and influence people

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi has a problem with politics. Kakashi and Naruto make some new friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time skip alert. It's been two years since the last chapter. Naruto is now four. Itachi is around twelve. Kakashi is seventeen. For the purposes of this fic Zabuza is twenty.

Sometimes, Itachi wondered if anyone was actually reading his psych reports, because there was no way they were coming out “within reasonable limits”. He was falling apart. There was just so much pressure, and he really didn’t feel old enough to be dealing with this. Most kids his age were still running D ranks and being pulled out of difficult situations by their jounin sensei’s, certainly none of them had to deal with the clusterfuck that was Uchiha-village relations.

It wasn’t that he minded being a prodigy exactly. He was a good ninja, he liked the challenge of high ranked missions, and it wasn’t as if anyone had _forced_ him to pass his exams early. Yes there was a lot of blood, and violence, and sleeping outside in the rain, but honestly it was far better than being stuck running the Tora the demon cat mission, and there was a fair amount of pride in knowing you were trusted to run the high ranked missions. It wasn’t the ninja work that was the problem. He’d signed up for that, he’d known more or less what he was getting into, and he knew he could do it. What he hadn’t signed up for was _politics._  

Politics Itachi was starting to believe, was basically a scaled up version of the kind of spurious rivalries you expected from academy students, and no matter what he did things kept escalating. Councilman Danzo set his not so secret police to spy on the Uchiha compound, Fugaku sent his officers on a “drugs raid” of Danzo’s offices. Danzo restricted the Uchiha to their clan compound when not on missions, the Uchiha military police instituted a village wide curfew. Whenever one of them made a move the other would respond and maybe the Sandaime might have been able to keep a lid on things, but with him out of commission it was verging on open warfare between the two factions. The Uchiha elders were making noises about a coup, and Itachi knew for a fact that some suspiciously large weapons shipments had been disappearing into Danzo’s underground lair. His clan were on the verge of starting a civil war with the rest of the village and neither side was willing to listen to reason.

The thing Itachi wanted to know was, since when was a teenager the voice of reason in a political dispute. The only person who even tried to support him in defusing the situation was his cousin Shisui, and Shisui wasn’t all that much older than he was. Konoha was on the brink of a civil war it could not afford. It was a miracle they’d managed to keep the situation a secret from enemy villages so far but that was a façade that could collapse at any moment. The other Konoha factions had been carefully reinforcing their strongholds and making alliances in preparation for the inevitable eruption of hostilities. Itachi had seen a brand new set of seals surrounding the hospital, library, and academy, there was a 24 hour guard on every clan compound, and every ninja with even a trace of political awareness had been stockpiling weapons and upgrading their traps. Itachi didn’t know what to do. It seemed like no-one believed the coming troubles could be stopped, and once it started, Itachi had no doubt that enemy villages would pounce on Konoha’s weakness, would destroy his village. It was bad enough trying to keep the Sandaime’s condition under wraps, there was no way they could hide an open civil war. Konoha would fall and everything Itachi had ever known or loved would be destroyed, and still he couldn’t make these _idiots_ see reason.

…

Haku wandered around the backwater village at something of a loose end. Zabuza sama was meeting with a client, and it was bad business to have an eight year old, no matter how skilled, tagging along to contract negotiations for semi-illegal services. In a larger town he’d wait at a restaurant, or at the bath house, in a more isolated area he might remain outside the village entirely, guarding their base camp or gathering herbs. But this town was both small enough that the only restaurant was the one Zabuza was meeting the client in, and large enough that there was nowhere in the surrounding area to make camp without being obvious about their presence.  So Haku was stuck wandering around the village trying not to draw attention to himself. It was working too, until a child sized blur crashed into his legs, pursued by angry villagers.

“Hide me Nee-chan.” The blur begged. Haku looked at the villagers, who were all marked by splashes of orange paint. Then he looked at the blur, which had coalesced into the shape of an adorable white haired, child, maybe four years old. Haku stifled a giggle, he could see what had happened here.

“Did you prank the nice villagers?”

“No.” The kid evidently wasn’t a very good liar. “Well ok. Maybe, a bit. But they’re overreacting. Please save me.” Haku pretended to think about it as the villagers drew closer, and then just as the kid looked about to give up and try and make a run for it Haku grabbed him and shunshined out of sight.

The villagers dispersed grouchily as the two of them watched from a tree. The kid breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thanks for saving me nee-chan, they would have thrown me in the river this time for sure.”

“Do you make a habit of pranking innocent villagers then?”

“No!” Haku gave him a sceptical look. “Not usually. It’s just I’m so booored. Ni-san’s been busy talking contracts with the village elders, and the local kids all go to school in the next town so they can’t play with me, and there’s just nothing to do.” Haku who had been thinking much the same thing himself before the kid had showed up couldn’t find himself in it to disagree. Still…

“You could play with me now. My… guardian will probably be in town for a while talking business, and I don’t know anyone here either.” He tried not to sound too hopeful. He would follow Zabuza sama anywhere, but sometimes it was lonely not having any other children to spend time with.

“Really! That would be so awesome nee-chan. We’ll be the best friends ever dattebayo!” Haku started a little at the kid’s enthusiasm. He was really… loud. It was refreshing, in a slightly intimidating sort of way.

“Ne if we’re going to be friends, shouldn’t you tell me your name first?” Haku could hear Zabuza sama calling him but waited a moment to hear the kid’s response.

“Oh right. Yeah. I’m Hatake Naruto dattebayo, and I’m going to be the most kick-ass mercenary in the world when I grow up.” Haku smiled.

“I’m Haku. I have to go now, but we can meet up again later if we’re both still free.” Naruto looked excited by the idea and it gave Haku a warm glowing feeling inside to know that someone was that happy to see _him._

“Sure thing Haku nee-chan.” Haku couldn’t resist a parting shot at his new friend.

“Oh and by the way. I’m actually a boy.”

…

Meanwhile Zabuza was having his own unexpected encounter.

“I know you. You’re Hatake Kakashi. The copy nin of Konoha.” Zabuza felt that he was entitled to be a little shocked. You didn’t generally run into ninja of Hatake’s level by chance. The copy nin didn’t tense at being recognised, and his relaxed stance, while irritating at least meant he wasn’t looking for a fight.

“Maa maa Zabuza san, I’m as much a missing nin as you are, demon of Kiri. We’re all just doing business here.” The mocking smile in his visible eye vanished as his voice turned serious. “And I think our client would be upset if we started fighting in the middle of his favourite restaurant.”

“Point.” Zabuza backed down a little, and listened quietly as the client outlined the job. It was fairly straightforward. Simple assassination of the local crime lord, with as much collateral damage as possible, estimated time, two days. He hadn’t expected the copy nin to baulk. The man was a professional, he’d done far worse things in the line of duty. He asked. No-one could accuse Zabuza Momochi of being anything other than blunt. The reply was a bit of a shock.

“I’m just not happy leaving my kid alone for that long.” The copy nin had a kid. What the hell. Zabuza considered a moment. He could just let the copy nin walk out. Offer to complete the task alone with Haku’s help. It would certainly increase their cut. But… the base’s layout made the mission complicated, and as good as Haku was, Hatake was better. If he took Haku in there he’d be risking the kid getting hurt and he found himself strangely unwilling to do that.

“You could leave him with my apprentice.” He found himself saying. “Haku’s young, but he’s easily chunin level, and he’s got a good level head on his shoulders.” The copy nin looked as though he was wavering. Few missing nin’s could afford to turn down work this well paid and Zabuza could see Hatake weighing up the pro’s and cons.

“Your apprentice. How old is he?”

“Eight. But as I said he’s very skilled.” Hatake waved him to silence.

“And how’s his tolerance for pranks?” Zabuza grinned.

“Like they say. It’s always the quiet ones.” Haku might hide it well, but he had a sadistic sense of humour under all the insecurity.

“In that case I wonder if the village will stay standing in our absence. Naruto is four years old and already a menace all by himself. I shudder to think what he could do with a willing accomplice.” Hatake said in a dark tone, before suddenly smiling, like flicking the worlds creepiest personality change switch and adding. “Should be entertaining. I’ll drop Naruto off here in an hour.” And with that the copy nin vanished. Zabuza wasted no time in tracking down his wayward apprentice.

“Oi Haku. You’re on babysitting detail for this mission. Think of it as the D-rank you never got a chance to do back in Kiri.” Because honestly the kid _deserved_ to suffer for never having had to run the sewer alligator extermination mission that had been the bane of Kiri genin’s lives for years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case your thinking Kakashi leaving Naruto with Haku is ooc. He's had Naruto for two years and trusts him to be able to escape someone who means him harm, he doesn't trust him to look after himself and not wreak havoc without supervision. Thus a vaguely untrustworthy caretaker is better than none at all. Also I'm assuming missing nin know each other by reputation and therefore Kakashi has a fairly good idea that Zabuza wouldn't intentionally hurt Naruto for no reason.


	5. It's not what it looks like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi has a very bad day. Naruto and Haku get into an awkward situation. Kakashi makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight mood whiplash in this chapter, but the second part is basically a filler episode so what can you do.

Itachi could hear laughter. Hollow and broken and mad. It took him a moment to register it was coming from him. All around him was blood. It was all over the floor and the walls and the ceiling, and he had the somewhat hysterical thought that they’d probably have to hire professionals to clean it all up. Couldn’t assign a mess like this as a D rank after all. It might traumatise the innocent little genins. After all some of them were two whole years younger than he was. The bitterness in that thought surprised him a little, it was more pettiness than he’d expected to be able to feel through the waves of grief and horror.

There was blood all over him as well, on his clothes, on his hands, in his hair, but that wouldn’t take professionals to clean up. The clothes he could burn and as for the rest. Well blood washed off people’s skin a lot easier than it did soft furnishings. He was growing a little lightheaded, and there were tears in his eyes that might have been blood or saltwater, but still he couldn’t stop laughing, could barely breathe through it. Sasuke looked terrified. Good, he should be, he had to be. He’d have to be strong to survive on his own and if fear of Itachi could provide motivation for that, well Itachi was perfectly prepared to be a nightmare for him. The sheer enormity of what he’d done hit him again, and he felt a sense of elation that was half adrenaline half shock. He’d be a legend for this, mothers would frighten their children to sleep with his name, his story would be spoken in whispers by hardened Anbu, all across the land of fire and beyond people would speak in horror and awe of Itachi who killed the entire Uchiha clan in one night. Sasuke was looking at him in fear, and shock, and disbelief, and a slowly growing hatred that Itachi was glad to see even as it cut him to the bone.

Maybe it wasn’t enough though, a mad little voice whispered at the back of his mind. He should make sure. A genjutsu would do it. Just to remind Sasuke to hate him, to fear him, to grow powerful in hopes of defeating him. The thought of his sweet innocent little brother consumed by vengeance stabbed at Itachi’s heart, but if Itachi had proved one thing tonight it was that the time for mercy had passed. Better that Sasuke find purpose in hating him than risk his little brother falling into despair. Despair was weakness and a shinobi who displayed weakness was easy prey for the likes of Danzo.

He looked down at his little brother, shaking, sharingan activated for the first time and finally stopped laughing. Fuck how had it come to this? Careful balancing act all fallen down and there was never a safety net. Shisui was deaddeaddead and he was alone, all alone, no more Uchiha, he’d made _sure_ of it, all dead, everyone. He shook but didn’t allow himself to cry, he felt like if he started he’d never stop. He wasn’t alone though, it was worse than that. Sasuke was here with him, tears in his eyes and Itachi was about to leave him alone in a village with the likes of Danzo. Alone in a village that was too weak and corrupt to protect him. He was a child with a valuable bloodline and Itachi had just killed the clan that had protected him. He’d need all the strength hatred could give him.

Itachi looked into his little brother’s tear filled eyes and tried to summon up the will to use the tsukuyomi. He tried, and found that he couldn’t do it. But he had to, the madness at the back of his head whispered, it was the only way to protect him. Then another voice deep in the depths of his mind spoke, soft and seductive and equally mad. What if there was another way.

_Blood of the clan, belongs with the clan._ Uchiha belonged with Uchiha. That was clan law, clan tradition. He and Sasuke were the only Uchiha left, Sasuke belonged with him. To abandon him, to leave him alone in this village would be a dereliction of duty.

He was leaving the village though. He was going to be a missing nin, was it right to take a child with him? It wasn’t safe, certainly it wasn’t a suitable environment for raising children.

“Hatake did it.” The soft voice whispered in the dark places of his mind, and Itachi found himself seriously considering its words. Hatake had done it. He’d taken a kid even younger and more high profile than Sasuke, and he’d run and they hadn’t been seen since. So that was a thing you could do, you could take kids with you when you went missing nin. Hatake had done it and got away with it, and Itachi was every bit as much of a genius as Hatake was. Anyway Sasuke was his brother, technically Itachi was his legal guardian now. It would effectively amount to child abandonment if he left Sasuke here.

His decision made, Itachi knocked Sasuke out with a sleep genjutsu. He would have to explain things later, for now he had to get them both clear before Danzo figured out his change of plans.

…

It had been nearly since Kakashi and Zabuza had left and Naruto was bored. So very bored. He’d had an idea though. He just had to convince his new best friend Haku that it was a good plan.

“Hey hey, Haku, we should totally go exploring.” Haku looked sceptical.

“Zabuza sama and Hatake san said to wait in the village until they came back.”

“Yeah but I’m soo boorred. Besides, Ni-san knows I get bored easily, if he left us here it means he must want us to explore. Hey what if there’s some dastardly plot going on and he’s trusting us to find out whats going on ‘cause we’re kids and no-one would suspect, so he and Zabuza san went on a mission as a distraction and left us here where we could investigate.” Haku’s head spun slightly as he tried to follow Naruto’s twisted chain of logic.

“But Naruto” Haku pointed out reasonably, “if there was something dastardly going on what would be the point sending us. We’re kids so there isn’t much we could do about it even if we found out.”

“Yeah but that’s what makes it such a brilliant plan. Cause normal kids wouldn’t be able to do anything, but we could ‘cause we’re awesome dattebayo, and they’d never see it coming cause we’re all little and cute so they’ll let us get really close and then bam. We use our awesome ninja powers to defeat them.” Naruto was jumping up and down with excitement by this point, and despite himself Haku found himself considering his words. It was true, Haku was far more skilled than most ninja his age and he felt fully confident in his ability to subdue opponents up to the level of high chunin. He didn’t know about Naruto but the boy seemed confident, and his older brother was the famed Hatake Kakashi, so he’d probably taught him a lot. Still he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to go against Hatake san’s specific instructions.

“But if Hatake san wanted us to do that wouldn’t he have told us, and given us information on our enemy?”

“Nah. Ni-san says it’s important to look underneath the underneath. He’s always doing stuff like this, telling me to do one thing when he secretly wants me to do something else. He says it’s good for my deductive reasoning skills.” Haku was still fairly dubious, but honestly he was fairly bored himself, and it wasn’t like anything really bad would happen if they just went for a little wander in the lands surrounding the village.

Fifteen hours later and Haku was seriously rethinking his position. Their adventure had started off harmlessly enough, they’d wandered through the woods, practiced tree jumping and played ninja hide and seek (which is like civilian hide and seek except that both participants have to hide and seek at the same time and the wined is the one that can sneak up on the other.) It had all been going so well, until they’d ended up on the grounds of an all girls boarding school, and gotten captured.

The way that teacher had managed to grab them both by the ears and drag them inside had not been natural. They might have been kids but they were still ninja’s. No civillain should have been able to hold them that easily. They’d been hauled up in front of the headmistress, who had been… unimpressed.

“So you must be the new girls.” She’d said in a voice that sent shivers down both boys backs “We were warned about you. You should both be ashamed of yourselves running around like little savages.” Then she rounded on Naruto, “And I don’t know what you think you’re wearing but in my establishment, I expect you to dress in a manner befitting young ladies.”

“But…” Haku tried to interject but the woman was having none of it.

“You will both be escorted to your lessons where you will learn to behave youselves in such a manner as to no longer bring shame upon your father’s houses. It is my job to turn you into well-mannered girls and I will not fail in my duty.” The headmistress’s eyes burned with the fires of hell, and Haku swallowed nervously.

“But we’re not girls we’re ninja dattebayo.” Naruto interrupted, and soon wished he hadn’t when the woman turned her full attention back on him.

“We were warned about you Ariko chan and your father has made it very clear he wants these silly ideas about running away to become a ninja to cease. You are the heir to the Yamada clan and it’s time to start acting like it. Now Ran chan will escort you to your lessons. Try to behave yourselves.”

And with that, Haku and Naruto had been packed off to lessons. It had been equal parts humiliating and horrifying. Pre-adolescent girls were _brutal,_ and the lessons had left him feeling woefully uneducated. He was a genius, if he’d been to ninja academy he’d probably have already graduated, but these girls were studying stuff he’d never even _heard_ of. What on earth was home economics, and why was it important? He felt completely inadequate and the fact that these girls would probably be just as lost if placed into a ninja academy classroom was little comfort. Clearly there were significant differences between a civilian education and a ninja one. It didn’t help that Naruto seemed to be settling in just fine, although that was probably a combination  of his natural charisma and the fact that he was young enough that no-one expected him to know anything yet.

Well Naruto _had_ been settling in fine until one of the teachers had spotted him reading out loud to his classmates from the latest Icha Icha book. Haku still wasn’t sure how he’d gotten his hands on it, and he really didn’t want to think about the fact that Naruto was familiar enough with the plot that he barely had to look at the text. Anyway that little incident had ended up with both of them back up in front of the head teacher. That’s when shit got confusing.

…

The mission had gone surprisingly smoothly. Zabuza had been every bit as skilled as his bingo book entry made him out to be, and after some initial awkwardness had turned out to be very good company. He was refreshingly blunt, and had a viciously dark sense of humour, that mostly seemed to come out when he was disembowelling the enemy. Kakashi could appreciate that in a mission partner. Things had in fact gone so well that at the end of it they exchanged summons details with a view to staying in contact. You never knew when a mission requiring a bit of extra back up might come your way after all. Really it had been going too well.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when they arrived back to find their kids standing in the middle of a smoking crater trying to look innocent. Kakashi held back the urge to sigh, really, what had he expected, leaving Naruto unsupervised was always a recipe for disaster. Lock that kid in a padded room with no furniture and within hours he’d find a portal to an alternate dimension, go through it, save said alternate dimension from an evil dinosaur wizard dictator using only the power of friendship, rescue a princess and receive the locals equivalent of a medal of honour before coming home slightly scuffed and even more confident than before. Trouble just seemed to find Naruto, Kakashi had long since given up trying to fight it.

Still he did feel an incipient headache as he and Zabuza each grabbed their respective child and disappeared before the locals could tie them to recent events. It was a good thing they’d already collected their pay, Kakashi had a sinking feeling it would be a while before they could show their faces in this part of Tea Country again.

Naruto’s explanation was slightly incoherent. Something about Naruto and Haku being kidnapped and sent to school by evil minions of a head teacher who’d turned out to be an eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, and they’d been forced to do _needlework,_ and then nearly eaten but Naruto had talked to her and explained the value of life and love and the way the people we care about make it all worthwhile and she’d had an epiphany and decided to return to her home dimension so that she could stand for office and help her society move into a brighter tomorrow. She’d left behind only a smoking crater where the school used to be and a handful of stickers for her mayoral campaign. She was apparently a really nice being, once you got to know her. After listening to Naruto’s story Kakashi had just sighed, ruffled his hair and offered to take him out for ramen. Parenthood was so much more complicated than the books made it seem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yep, Itachi has snapped and done a Hatake. You'll get to see the peanut gallery's reaction next chapter. And no Sasuke is not going to be happy when he wakes up. He'll get over it though.  
> Kakashi and Zabuza have parted ways, but they've left summons details so that they can get in contact. Expect to see them teaming up on many occasions to come. And no Haku and Zabuza haven't worked out why Naruto has porn yet.


	6. Poor life choices and the people who make them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Itachi has some explaining to do, the peanut gallery has new gossip to spread, and Kakashi has an unexpected encounter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Itachi is a deeply disturbed individual. Do not choose him as a role model kids. (yes that means you Sasuke)

Itachi watched his little brother sleep. He really didn’t want to wake him. With the waking would come tears and explanations, and that horrible look of fear and betrayal in Sasuke’s eyes. Sasuke asleep was peaceful and innocent and soothed the bleeding wounds in Itachi’s soul, waking him up would make this whole nightmare real and Itachi didn’t want to face that.

He looked away as he shook Sasuke awake and the sobbing gasp his brother made as he realised last night wasn’t just a dream broke Itachi’s heart. Turning to face him was the hardest thing Itachi had ever done.

The look in Sasuke’s eyes was everything Itachi had feared and worse. Grief, and confusion, and betrayal, and utter shock. For a few minute neither of them spoke, after all, what words could hope to address the things running through their hearts. In the end it was Sasuke who pulled himself together first, just enough to whisper.

“Why?” Itachi tried, but he couldn’t bring himself to answer so Sasuke spoke again. “Why ni-san?” Itachi shook and counted it as a win that he didn’t burst into tears.

“I had to otouto. They were going to destroy everything, them and councilman Danzo, but I couldn’t stop Danzo, not without Shisui, he was too strong and _suspicious,_ and I could stop the Uchiha because they weren’t expecting it. They _trusted me_ so I had to do it I was the only one that could. Maybe Shisui could have done it too but Shisui _died,_ He died and left me alone and none of them would _listen_ to me.” Once he started talking he found he couldn’t stop. All the strain and grief and despair of the last year came pouring out of him in an only half coherent confession to his four year old brother

“There was going to be a war, I could see it coming, they kept making things worse and there was only one way it was going to end and none of them would _back down.”_ Sasuke looked confused, but Itachi was barely seeing him by this point, the simple relief of speaking the truth aloud, overriding all other concerns.

“And of course there was no way we could have covered up a civil war, and Konoha would have looked weak, and we can’t afford to look weak, not now with things the way they are, and the other villages would have taken advantage and destroyed Konoha just like they did Uzushio, and you would have _died._ I couldn’t let that happen. Not for anything.” He met Sasuke’s eyes for the first time since the night before.

“I would burn the world to ash to see you safe Sasuke, remember that.” The manic determination in his eyes as he said that would have sent ice down the backs of seasoned Anbu if any had been there to see. But there was just Itachi and his four year old brother, too young to read the signs of madness. Sasuke didn’t move any closer to Itachi, but when Itachi moved closer to him he didn’t flinch away and when Itachi picked him up he clung to him tightly and sobbed. Itachi could feel the fluttering of Sasuke’s heartbeat through his ribcage and rocked him gently, as he would for a much younger child.

“Shh Sasuke. No-one’s going to hurt you. I won’t let them, I’ll kill them first.” Sasuke hiccupped slightly.

“But what if you hurt me?”

“I would never.” Itachi swore, resolutely ignoring his original plan to genjutsu torture his brother into hunting him down for revenge. He hadn’t done it so it didn’t count.

“You hurt Mother and Father. You killed them, I saw. There was so much blood.” Itachi was mildly impressed that even after everything he’d been through Sasuke was still asking awkward questions.

“Shhh, you know I had to do that. They were going to hurt you.”

“But…”

“They wouldn’t have meant to of course.” Itachi quickly clarified, “But they were going to do something bad and it would have ended up with you getting hurt and I couldn’t let that happen. Not even if it meant killing our clan.” He could see Sasuke wavering, confused. He was afraid, his family was dead and he wanted his big brother to hold him, and protect him, and promise everything would be alright, but at the same time his big brother was the reason his family was dead, was the very thing his was scared of. He wavered but in the end he held tight to his brother just as Itachi had suspected he would. After all Sasuke had no-where else to go and no-one else to look after him, and so his instincts drove him to cling to Itachi. It was the same principle that had made child stealing so effective during the warring clans era. Given time a young child alone would latch on to any adult that showed them the least bit of affection, no matter what they’d seen that adult do to other people. It was a survival trait Itachi supposed, a child too young to defend itself needed to be able to bond with any adult protector they could find if they wanted to survive. The implications were slightly disturbing but in this case they played in his favour so he wasn’t going to complain.

With the Sasuke situation at least marginally under control he sat down to consider his options. He was a missing nin now. The diagonal mark he’d slashed across his headband in preparation for killing the clan made it official. There had been some noises about him playing spy on some missing nin organisation until the heat died down and he could be brought back to the village, but like hell was he taking Sasuke into a dangerous situation like that for those fuckers. Besides, he suspected that taking Sasuke with him might have nullified that deal, Danzo wouldn’t be happy about it at any rate. Anyway fuck Konoha, he and Sasuke were well out of it.

He felt pleased with his decision for about five minute before realising that he had no idea what to do with his newfound freedom.

…

The jounin lounge was not silent, the jounin lounge was _never_ silent. But all the same an air of awestruck horror had settled over the room. Uchiha Itachi had killed his entire clan. There was some news that was almost beyond gossip.

Almost, but not quite. Anko cut through the disbelieving whispers to say her piece.

“Hey guys, did you know that no-one found Uchiha Sasuke’s body at the scene of the crime?” The whispering stopped. Heads turned to look at Anko’s gleeful grin. Genma was the first to respond.

“What you think Itachi took the body away with him? Why? What would he do with it?”

“Maybe he ate it?” Hizashi muttered, he’d never much liked Itachi.

“Or maybe there wasn’t a body. They didn’t find any actual proof Sasuke was dead.” Anko in conspiracy theory mode was a terrifying thing to behold, not least because she was so often right.

“Which one was Sasuke again?” Aoba asked.

“Sasuke was Itachi’s little brother.” The whole room was suddenly paying very close attention to Anko’s words.

“How old?” Shibi demanded.

“About four.” Anko informed them all with relish. Genma groaned.

“Do you mean to say, that you think Uchiha Itachi has done a _Hatake?”_

“I’m just saying there’s no proof that he _hasn’t_ done a Hatake.” Anko smirked. Raido took the opportunity to interrupt.

“Hang on a minute, is that what we’re calling this now, “Doing a Hatake.” This is now an actual thing?”

“Pretty much yeah. Why? Have you got a problem with that?” Genma’s response was casual but promised violence to any who dared challenge him.

“No, no, just seeking clarification. So doing a Hatake is an actual thing now.”

“Well I suppose that really depends on whether Itachi’s actually done it or not. If he hasn’t then it’s more of an isolated incident. It’s only if it happens more than once that it’s a thing.” Ebisu pointed out.

“So I suppose the question is, did Itachi do it?” Kurenai concluded in her most sensible voice. Listening to it no-one would ever suspect her of being one of the most feared gossipmongers in Konoha.

“My money says he did.” Anko interjected. “He fucking adored that kid. No way he killed him, but I can totally see him kidnapping him. Wait, does it count as kidnapping if he’s the child’s only living relative?”

“It does if the reason he’s the child’s only living relative is because he murdered the rest of his family.” Ibiki intoned from the doorway causing the rest of the jounin to jump out of their skins and wonder just how long he’d been there listening. He continued.

“And as far as Anbu have been able to determine, Uchiha Sasuke was not killed within the boundaries of the Uchiha clan compound. Furthermore none of Itachi’s psych reports indicate he was likely to kill his younger brother.”

“What and they indicated he was likely to kill the rest of his clan?” Genma snarked only to be met by an awkward silence. “No. You’re not saying that his fucking _psych reports_ warned us this was coming and we didn’t, oh I don’t know, stick the kid in therapy or something.” All eyes turned to Inoichi as head of the psych department.

“Well we didn’t think he’d actually go this far. We knew he was under a lot of strain and he had developed some… resentment for his clan, but we didn’t think he’d actually go crazy-A bonkers and kill them all.” Was Inoichi’s somewhat embarrassed response. “But Ibiki’s right, according to our reports he absolutely adored his younger brother. It’s our opinion that Uchiha Sasuke is probably alive and at least physically uninjured.” There was a brief silence. Then Anko spoke.

“I guess it’s official then. “Doing a Hatake” is an actual thing.” Genma just sighed.

“What is it with genius prodigies and kidnapping small children to go on the run with? It’s starting to get a bit weird.”

...

Tanazaku Gai was oddly relaxing. For once Kakashi didn’t feel the slight tension that came from being a wanted criminal trespassing amongst innocent citizens. In Tanazaku Gai innocent citizens were an endangered species that knew to stay out of the wanted criminals’ way. He’d been hired as a casino guard, which was good work if you could get it. Room and board free and easy access to a bar. Not usually shinobi work though. Casino owners tended to hire local toughs and half trained samurai for what was essentially a glorified bouncer job. Fortunately for Kakashi (and unfortunately for local businessmen) there had been a spate of casino robberies by low level missing nin. The regular guards had proved ineffective and so Omaeda san had called in Kakashi to deal with the problem once and for all.

The mission was to pose as one of the regular guards, wait for the robbers to attack, and then kill them all. Kakashi sort of admired the brutal elegance of it. He definitely admired the attached paycheck. Naruto liked it too. It had been one of their longer assignments so far, almost a month hanging around trying to look more dangerous than the average citizen, but less dangerous than he actually was. Given that much time to settle in and build his powerbase Naruto had managed to unite the kiddie street gangs that plagued the town, become their pint sized king and declare war on any and all adults that tried to interfere with their reign of terror. The town trembled under Naruto’s miniature shinobi sandal, Kakashi thought it was _adorable._ At the beginning, concerned parents and angry citizens had tried to get him to rein Naruto in. He’d just eye smiled at them and said…

“Maa, maa, kids will be kids. Let them enjoy the freedom of childhood, it will teach them valuable lessons for the future.” Before he suddenly released a burst of killing intent, adding in a cold voice. “It wouldn’t do to interfere with their growth as people would it?” That was the point where most of them backed away with stammered agreement. Even the more persistent ones broke and ran at the glare that followed.

Kakashi blamed the false sense of security he’d developed in Tanazaku Gai for the fact that he hadn’t seen her coming. If he’d still had his ear to the ground he’d have known about the legendary sucker’s arrival days before it happened. Tanazaku Gai was a gambling town after all, they kept track of things like that. But he’d let his attention slip and so the first he realised she was in town was when she started a brawl in the casino he was guarding. Something about debts owed, and a shortage of sake he thought.

There were no exact words for the creeping feeling of disaster that hit him when he walked over to break up a bar fight and found Tsunade of the sannnin at the centre of it. It was like all his bad choices catching up to him at once. Their eyes met and widened in a moment of mutual recognition and panic, and Kakashi was halfway through calculating escape routes before he realized Tsunade had done a runner. He considered his options. He should take this as the god given reprieve it was and get the hell out of dodge before she changed her mind and came back. He really really should. But, Kakashi was a shinobi, and shinobi are curious by nature. Why had she run? She was Tsunade of the sannin, she had no need to go for backup and while she may not have been hunting him specifically any loyal Konoha ninja that was capable of taking him in should at least have tried. She hadn’t and he really wanted to know why.

A half-forgotten memory stirred at the back of his mind. _Tsunade of the sannin left the village and swore never to return._ He could still trace her chakra signature, and he couldn’t quite resist following. Curiosity would be the death of him one day, he suspected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the peanut gallery for this installment consisted of Anko, Genma, Hizashi (the Hinata kidnap incident hasn't happened yet), Aoba, Shibi, Raido, Ebisu, Kurenai, Inoichi, and Ibiki.
> 
> And yes there will be more kidnappings/defections. I suspect half of the jounin present are secretly wondering which kid they'd take if they went missing nin. (not that they would of course, just... a harmless thought experiment.)


	7. Beware of kid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kakashi and Tsunade have a drink, Ramen King Naruto takes a prisoner, and Sasuke does his best limpet impression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purposes of this story at this point Shizune is ten, Tsunade is in her late thirties, and Tsunade left the village seven years ago.

Tsunade was staying in a nondescript inn. Shabby enough not to draw attention, but not quite a den of inequity either. The shinobi in Kakashi approved. It was just the sort of place to stay if you wanted to keep your head down without getting caught up in local criminal activities. He and Naruto were staying somewhere fairly similar.

He didn’t bother trying to be subtle. She was Tsunade of the Sannin, and she knew he was around. The chances of successfully sneaking up on her were approximately zero, but if he came openly and non-threateningly she might just be curious enough to stick around. Ninja are curious creatures by nature after all.

He found her waiting for him in the lobby with a bottle of sake. From everything he’s heard that was not out of character.

“Tell sensei I’m not coming back, it doesn’t matter how many of you idiots he sends to try and convince me.” Kakashi’s thoughts came to a screeching halt. He froze for a moment, reran her declaration through his head, and was forced to revisit his assumptions. Well that explained why she hadn’t attacked him on sight he supposed.

“You mean you hadn’t heard?” Kakashi started sidling towards the door. Really he should have just played along and got out of there, but something in her attitude made him curious. Besides, taking stupid risks had got him this far, it would be silly to stop now.

“Heard what?” Tsunade’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as she revisited her own assumptions about the nature of their encounter. It didn’t take long, she was a smart woman, he could see the exact moment the pieces slotted together. “Konoha didn’t send you did they?” At least she wasn’t attacking.

“Well no. Not as such. I may have had a slight… falling out with the village. I don’t actually work for Konoha anymore.”

“You’re a missing nin.” She observed neutrally.

“Maybe.” He hedged.

“You’re a missing nin. Hidden villages don’t just let high level shinobi run off and do their own thing. Hell the only reason _I’m_ not declared a missing nin is because it would be too bloody embarrassing for Konoha to admit that the last of the Senju gave them the finger and told them to fuck off and die.”

“Did you actually use those exact words?” Kakashi was morbidly curious.

“It was strongly implied when I walked out of the village with my student and swore never to return.” She said dryly. “So what made you finally decide to pack up and leave? I have to say I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type.” The room suddenly went cold with killing intent.

“They _hurt_ Naruto.” Kakashi growled darkly. “They can all _burn_ in _hell_.” Then he suddenly let the killing intent dissipate and smiled bright enough to be visible under the mask. “Besides being a missing nin is far more fun. I don’t ever have to do mission reports ever again. Naruto likes it too. He gets to travel and see the world and make new friends out of terrifying enemies wherever he goes.”

“Who’s Naruto?” Tsunade inquired curiously.

“Minato and Kushina’s son. The Kyuubi’s jinchuriki.” He was honestly a little surprised. She must really be on the outs with Konoha if they hadn’t told Naruto’s only living blood relative his name.

There was a brief but intensely awkward silence as she processed this information. Then she screeched.

“You _stole_ a jinchuriki and took it on a _road trip.”_

“Is it stealing when it’s another human being. That strikes me as rather dehumanising.”

“We’re ninja” Tsunade replied flatly, “Our whole lives are dehumanising. But fine if it bothers you that much you _kidnapped_ a jinchuriki and took him on a road trip.”

“Maa, kidnapping is a strong word. I prefer to think of it as… aggressive adoption. He’s clearly better off with me. And he was only two when I took him, that’s young enough. It’s not like they were watching him that closely, leaving cute kids of that age lying around is just _asking_ for someone to take them.” He gave what he considered to be one of his best disarming grins. It didn’t work. Tsunade just gave him a long look before bashing her head repeatedly against the table. It left massive dents in the wood.

“Look I’m not saying you were _wrong_ to take the kid. Minato was your _teacher_ , obviously you had a responsibility to raise him the way Minato would have wanted. But you do realise Konoha will never stop hunting you?”

“I know. They put me in the bingo books and everything.” He possibly shouldn’t be that smug about it but it was sort of gratifying to be acknowledged for his skills. Even if the entry did say he was crazy. He wasn’t crazy, he was just unconventional. “But I managed to give them the slip at the start and they honestly haven’t been looking very hard since.” He leaned in and lowered his voice to a whisper “I think they’ve been a little distracted by problems closer to home.” Tsunade seemed to give up at that point.

“Whatever. I guess it’s your risk to take. At least you had the guts to bloody well stand up to those bastards. Good on you. And the kid. You know you should introduce him to my Shizune, I’m sure they have lots in common.”

“Shizune?” Kakashi hadn’t heard that name before.

“My student. She’s my dead fiance’s little sister. I took her with me when I left. She has the most adorable interest in poisons. Come on lets go have a drink and we can swap stories about our cute little kids.”

…

Civilians, Itachi decided, were bizarre.

Itachi had a certain reputation. It was the sort of reputation that a person tended to get when they became a professional killer at seven years old and went on to become one of the most dangerous ninja in the world by his early teens, before apparently losing his mind and killing a couple of hundred of his own family members in the space of one night. It was the sort of reputation that made enemies shake in their boots and his own allies twitch if he looked at them wrong. Itachi was a living nightmare and the usual reaction of those who managed to irritate him was either cowering apology, or panicked flight.

He was not cute.

The civilians disagreed. They saw him with Sasuke in his arms, scowling at them, and they thought it was _adorable._ It was honestly disconcerting. People kept smiling at him, and trying to pinch his cheeks. His obvious annoyance only seemed to encourage them, and they kept rambling on about how sweet it was that he was so protective of his little brother. They laughed when he started asking around for work. He wondered if maybe he should have left Sasuke behind and used a henge. Clearly he wasn’t presenting a very threatening image.

No-one would hire him for assassinations, no-one would hire him for guard missions, he did however, manage to get someone to pay him to rescue a cat from a tree, which led to one of their friends paying him to paint their fence, which in turn led to a job clearing weeds. By the time the day ended it felt like he’d completed a lifetimes worth of D-ranks, and he swore, never again. He didn’t care how clingy Sasuke was feeling, he could not stand another day of little old civilian ladies cooing at him.

Unfortunately leaving Sasuke somewhere safe while he tried to find honest ninja work was easier said than done. He tried putting Sasuke down but found him extremely unwilling to let go. After ten minutes of trying he managed to peel his brother off of him one limb at a time, and set him down on the ground, only for the limpet to immediately attach itself to his legs. Kawarimi just resulted in screaming. Itachi honestly didn’t feel equipped for this. Maybe he’d been a bit hasty taking his baby brother with him on the run. Itachi thought about Danzo’s plotting, and Konoha’s petty factionalism, and a clan compound painted red with blood and decided that despite his current difficulties he had made the right choice. Faith in his own genius restored he set himself to solving the clingy Sasuke problem.

In the end Itachi resorted to a shadow clone. It was not in any way an abuse of ninja powers. Sasuke was unrelenting, and it was impossible to get decent mercenary work with a toddler clinging around your neck. Even if you did henge yourself to look older. So he left Sasuke-the-limpet with a clone while he found himself a nice straightforward sabotage mission to clear his head. He felt a lot better after that, some business man had hired him to blow up a rival’s office block. Itachi breathed in the sweet smell of smoke and rubble and smiled, there was nothing quite like high explosives for exorcising demons. Maybe he should take Sasuke with him next time, he could even teach him some katon jutsu. It would be a bonding experience.

…

The Ramen King looked upon his prisoner. His prisoner looked back. He glared at her, she glared at him. This stand off continued for a good five minutes before he gave in.

“What were you doing sneaking around our secret base.” He was trying for intimidating, she didn’t seem all that impressed. In his defence intimidating was hard to pull off when you were all of four years old and adorable. Not that Naruto _minded_ being adorable. It made adults willing to buy him ramen. But in situations like these it could be a bit of a handicap. His prisoner rolled her eyes.

“I told you, I wasn’t looking for you, I was trying to find the local loansharks so that I could convince them not to lend money to Shishou. It never ends well for anyone and I was hoping we might be able to leave town _without_ making a massive scene this time.” She was young, only a little older than Haku, but she had Haku’s air of a child grown up quicker than most. Naruto wondered if that was a ninja thing. Certainly he felt more adult than most of the civilian four year olds he meant. Not as much of an adult as Haku or this girl, but he didn’t understand how the civilian kids could be so innocent. There were ten and twelve year olds that had never even seen anyone killed. It was weird.

It didn’t apply so much here of course. Tanazaku Gai was full of criminals and gangsters, and most of their kids had some introduction to the family business. Even the kids of genuine civilians tended to pick things up. There was no school in Tanazaku Gai and so the kids ran half feral on the streets while their parents worked, and learned all kinds of things ormal civilians didn't. Left with nothing better to do they occupied themselves with petty crime and vandalism targeted at adults, and vicious war waged upon each other. They were Naruto’s kind of people.

It had only taken a few demonstrations of Naruto’s signature brand of mayhem for them to accept him as one of their own. After that it had been the work of days to unite the warring factions under his leadership and start a reign of terror that made most of the local adults break out in a cold sweat at the sight of a toddler. Of course they would probably fragment back into civil war after he left, but still he liked to think he’d taught them some important lessons about teamwork.

But still half feral as they were, even the kids of Tanazaku Gai lacked the hard edge that the ninja children Naruto had met, carried. This girl had it, and that worried Naruto. There was no hitae-ate, so at least she wasn’t a village ninja, Ni-san had warned him about village ninja. But even if she was missing nin, missing nin were an unpredictable bunch and he had no idea who her Shishou was, and where. Ni-san had been very, very clear about what to do in these situations, so he called one of his younger subjects, and told him quietly to fetch Ni-san. Then he turned back around and smiled at his prisoner, and speaking in a grand and kingly voice declared.

“You have trespassed in the realm of the Ramen King. All who venture into this holy place must prove their devotion.” She rolled her eyes, but apparently she didn’t suspect he was shinobi, and was willing to humour him rather than risk killing little kids.

“And how do I do that?”

“You must eat twenty bowls of Ramen in ten minutes!” Naruto grinned. It was a good distraction. Not only would it keep her busy until Ni-san arrived, it would also put her in a good mood. Ramen made _everyone_ feel better. A chill ran down his spine, and he turned to see her glaring at him. Huh, maybe he hadn’t offered enough Ramen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neither Kakashi or Tsunade know what Itachi did yet. They'll find out soon though. And next chapter there will be Tenzo.


	8. You don't have to be mad to work here (but it helps)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi and Tsunade go drinking, Itachi and Sasuke commit arson, Danzo throws a tantrum, and Haku gets a new pen pal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I broke through the writers block on this one and now have a rough idea of what happens over the next six chapter. I have a feeling this is going to end up quite a long fic.

Kakashi knew better than to try and match Tsunade drink for drink. The woman was a fish. A fraction of what she was drinking would be enough to leave him giggling on the floor. He could only assume some kind of secret healing technique was in play because mere mortals would have collapsed from alcohol poisoning hours ago.

He hadn’t even tried to match Tsunade, but he’d still had a respectable amount. It was a good thing neither of them were rowdy drunks. Getting kicked out of the bar would be embarrassing. Although he wasn’t sure if Tsunade’s particular brand of maudlin drunk wasn’t worse. He had a horrible feeling she might start crying on him. He wasn’t sure exactly what she was talking about. Something about dead relatives, and dead fiances, and no good lying evil teammates. (He still wasn’t sure if she was talking about Orochimaru or Jiraya, or possibly both). At any rate it clearly wasn’t a happy conversation so he felt no guilt over changing the subject.

“So tell me about your cute little student.” Tsunade immediately brightened.

“She iss adorable. Did I ever tell you about the time she fed a loan shark to an actual shark?”

“A shark?”

“Yep. We were at a circus, and he was being annoying, so I told Shizune to make him go away.”

“And she fed him to a shark?” Kakashi wondered if maybe that was a little excessive. Then again Naruto once started a minor religious civil war when he founded a cult in order to solicit ramen donations, so he was probably in no position to make judgements. “I didn’t even know circuses had sharks. Aren’t dolphins meant to be more traditional?”

“Meh, it was in Kiri. Dolphins aren’t mean enough to hack it in Kiri.” Kakashi thought about it a little and decided she had a point. He was going to press for more details. He’d never actually seen anyone eaten by a shark and he was curious. Before he could ask though, a small child came running up to them.

“Excuse me are you Naruto sama’s Kakashi nii san?” She panted, still out of breath.

“Why yes, I am. Why do you ask?” Kakashi’s casual tone masked the sudden tension in his posture.

“Naruto sama told me to tell you to come quickly. He says he caught a ninja spy and now he doesn’t know what to do with her.” Kakashi stood up quickly.

“Where?”

…

Anyone else, Tenzo decided, would be seriously regretting all of their life choices. Tenzo would be too, to be perfectly honest, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he hadn’t actually made all that many life choices, and try as he might he couldn’t think of any that might have resulted in his current position. No, the situation he found himself in was definitely the result of other people’s life choices. It was really quite unfair.

Danzo had spent the last ten minutes ranting, and turning interesting colours. So far Tenzo had seen red, purple, white, and an odd blotchy bluish shade, and learned at least five new swearwords. He suppressed a sigh. Danzo sama had built his reputation on being, clever, manipulative, and in control at all times. He _never_ lost his temper in public. Unfortunately, being sealed to silence meant root operatives didn’t count as public, so Tenzo now had a front row seat to the spectacle of an S ranked ninja throwing a tantrum.

Tenzo had actually rather liked Uchiha Itachi. Most Anbu did. He was cute, in a dangerously homicidal sort of way. Of course he couldn’t say that to Danzo. Not since the thing where Itachi chan killed his whole family and kidnapped his brother. Danzo really wasn’t happy with Itachi chan.

Tenzo had mostly tuned out the specifics, but the words “double crossing, childstealing, obsessive little psycho”, featured heavily. All of it was true of course, but Tenzo couldn’t help thinking that Danzo was really taking it all a little personally. It wasn’t as if it was _Danzo’s_ family he’d killed, Danzo hadn’t even liked the Uchiha all that much. Although maybe that was the point, some ninja got weirdly possessive about rivalries. They had no problem murdering, torturing, and otherwise tormenting their enemies in the worst ways imaginable but God help anyone else that tried to mess with them. Possibly because they were fucked up enough that it was the only kind of relationship they could really commit to.

Danzo was certainly disturbed enough for that. Especially since the Kyuubi attack. The situation with the Hokage was a real strain on him. Not that anyone not brainwashed and sealed to silence would ever know it of course, but most of root was fairly convinced that Hiruzen had been the only person in the world Danzo was genuinely attached to. Root as a whole was convinced that the lack of positive human relationships had caused Danzo to latch onto the Uchiha and generate a mutually destructive, co-dependent rivalry, in order to satisfy his inborn psychosocial need for human connections. (Root members tended to read a lot of pop psychology books).

Although honestly Danzo seemed more annoyed by the kidnapping than the mass murder. But then sometimes ninja priorities could be a bit skewed, Anko for example was perfectly willing to torture people for stealing her dango. Maybe it was something to do with stealing the future of his rivalry or something, Tenzo had long since given up trying to understand what went on in that man’s head.

As Danzo’s rant continued Tenzo wondered whether Itachi might not have had the right idea. Not about the mass murder of course, that was just excessive, but the abandoning the village bit. Certainly, he thought, he wasn’t getting paid enough for this bizzare combination of fear, and deep embarrassment. Fear because S ranked nin in a bad mood are a terrifying thing to encounter, embarrassment, because watching a senior shinobi reduced to a gibbering fury by a fourteen year old was just… awkward.

In fact Tenzo was pretty sure he wasn’t getting paid at all. After all one of the major advantages of a brainwashed army is that you don’t have to pay them properly. He got room and board obviously, and a weapons resupply stipend, but no actual wages. Missing nin got paid. He knew that after plenty of missions chasing them down. In fact they got paid pretty well. Tenzo caught himself wondering how much Kakashi senpai was getting paid these days.

He went off shift still thinking about it. Itachi, and Kakashi, and now he came to think of it there had to be a reason the legendary sannin had all left the village in one way or another. Maybe they were onto something. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had both the money, and the time off to visit the hot springs. This bore some consideration.

…

Sasuke probably should have been more angry with Itachi nii. He’d left him with a _shadow clone,_ while he got to go off and do cool ninja stuff. Sasuke only found out when he squeezed Itachi so tight the clone burst. That had been terrifying actually. For a moment he’d thought the real Iachi had burst and Sasuke was all alone. Luckily Itachi had rushed back as soon as the memories hit, and arrived back in time to avert a full meltdown. Sasuke was still upset though. Well, until Itachi promised to make it up to him.

And he had. Itachi was the most awesome big brother in the world and he’d found a whole abandoned village for them to practice fire jutsus on. It was amazing. Itachi showed him how to _breathe fire,_ and then he showed him how to do it in different colours, and then he let him burn down the empty police station. Sasuke found that very satisfying. He had always resented how much of his family’s attention was taken up by police work. Actually work in general had always taken up too much of his family’s time. Now that he and Itachi were fugitives from the law, Itachi actually had time to train him like he always promised. Sasuke decided he actually quite liked being a fugitive. He still wasn’t happy about how it happened, but he understood why Itachi had done it, he missed his parents but if he’d had to choose between them and Itachi, he’d always have chosen Itachi. Itachi was his favourite. And now they were fugitives, they could spend time burning down villages together instead of having to do homework or missions all the time. It was better this way.

He gasped as he watched Itachi create a dragon out of whirling flames and handsigns, and smile at the way the fire danced to his will. It was so cool. Then he started showing Sasuke how to set explosive tags. He even let Sasuke set them off. Itachi was definitely the coolest big brother in the world. Maybe if he was really good, Itachi would let him burn down the school.

…

Tsunade wasn’t laughing at her apprentice. Really she wasn’t. If she did that Shizune would probably hide her sake for a week. She was very tempted though.

The brat Kakashi was under no such compunctions. The sight of a skilled young ninja trussed up in skipping ropes by a horde of small children and surrounded by more empty ramen bowls than anyone sane would consider eating, had him breaking out in unashamed giggles. The fact that a small blonde child that called him nii san seemed to be in charge of the whole situation was probably a contributing factor.

Once the adults had managed to pull themselves together and convince Naruto to let Shizune loose, he suggested they all go grab some lunch at the nearest ramen stand.

The look in Shizune’s eyes promised bloody vengeance.

She kept glaring all through lunch. In the end Tsunade decided to just tune it out. It was a learning experience after all. Probably even counted as torture resistance training. Besides Naruto was every bit as cute as Kakashi had claimed. With big innocent eyes that were a dead match for Minato’s, and a wicked smile that reminded her so much of Kushina that it hurt. No wonder Kakashi had decided to steal him away. If Konoha had become so bitter and twisted that they couldn’t appreciate that kind of adorability then she was glad she’d left. She wondered idly if any other jounins would have the sense to follow her and Kakashi’s example.

It hurt, that she hadn’t known Kushina had a son, that she hadn’t been there for him, but when she saw how he cuddled up to Kakashi while babbling excitedly about his little minions, she decided that in the end it wasn’t important. Kakashi clearly took good care of him, would likely burn the world down for his sake, and even if she was a little late in offering support, she was here now. She exchanged summons details with Kakashi, and made him promise to call if either he or Naruto ever needed her help.

Her sweet little Shizune had thawed out a little over the course of the meal and by the end of it was involved in an intense whispered conversation with Naruto. Moments later she and Kakashi found themselves hit by a barrage of paper aeroplanes. She was pretty sure the idea was Naruto’s but the execution was all Shizune. It was good to see her indulging her talent for origami.

Watching the two of them laughing, Tsunade was struck by young Shizune was, and she was glad all over again that she’d decided to steal her away from Konoha. Hidden villages eat their children, and if Tsunade had anything to say about it Shizune would never have to find that out the hard way.

Of course, young as Shizune might have been she was still a ninja, and  she was _smiling_ as they left town so Tsunade had to ask.

“So what exactly did you do to the brat?” Shizune just blinked innocently.

“Nothing he won’t recover from.”

Back in Tanazaku Gai Naruto woke to find that all his precious orange jumpsuits had been dyed neon pink. When he complained, Kakashi nii san had just ruffled his hair.

“Maa Naruto, this is an important life lesson, if you make a woman angry, she will always find a way to make you suffer.” Then he smiled. “Besides, I think the pink rather suits you.”

…

Halfway across the continent Haku received a letter. He turned it over and examined it for traps, but in the end curiosity drove him to open it. He sighed. He really should have guessed Naruto had something to do with it.

_Dear Haku san_

_My name is Shizune, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to be my pen pal. I realise this letter must be unexpected, but Naruto gave me your details and I thought it would be nice to talk to someone who understands the sheer insane force of nature that is Hatake Naruto. I met him a couple of days ago and in that time he led an army of small children in capturing me, tying me up, and force feeding me truly obscene amounts of ramen, he used said children to launch a reign of terror on one of the most notorious vice towns in fire country, and he managed to manipulate my shishou into thinking he’s an innocent little angel. And yet despite all that I still think he’s adorable. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s had to deal with this sort of thing._

_I am ten years old and have an interest in origami, poisons, senbon, healing jutsu, and tea ceremonies. I travel widely with my shishou, but you can reach me by summons at any time (details enclosed) If you would like to be my penpal, please write back and tell me about yourself. I only know what Naruto told me, and as i’m sure you know he can be a bit… excitable._

_Yours sincerely Shizune._

Haku thought about it for a while, but honestly it really would be nice to have a sensible friend. Especially one who understood the sheer insanity that was an encounter with Naruto. He loved travelling with Zabuza sama but it would be nice to have someone his own age to talk to. He picked up a brush and started writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shizune and Haku are wrongly convinced they are sane. They bond over all the insane other people who surround them. And I fully intend for Shizune/Haku to eventually end up a thing in this universe. They won't meet in person for a while though.


	9. Responsible adults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tenzo finds some cute mini assassins, Gaara's childhood is significantly improved, Naruto destroys civilisation, and Zabuza finds out about the porn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gaara originally wasn't going to show until later, but then it was rightly pointed out to me that poor Zabuza is a bit outnumbered so, here he is. (aged six to Naruto's five for the purposes of this fic.)

Yashamaru stood with his face impassive as his brother in law ordered him to kill his nephew. It was enough to make a man wonder if maybe those Konoha fuckers didn’t have the right idea after all. He kept his expression utterly blank as he considered his options. Killing Gaara was out of the question. He thought about the sweet innocent six year old that truly didn’t mean to hurt anyone, his _sister’s_ child, the child he had raised, that _trusted_ him. No, if he killed Gaara he would never forgive himself, and for good reason. He could let Gaara kill him, less than ideal but more of a viable option than killing Gaara. Of course he would have to make his betrayal obvious and traumatic, otherwise he’d be a sitting target for anyone trying to manipulate him. Yashamaru could do it, he was a ninja, he _breathed_ manipulation but thinking about it left a sour taste in his mouth when he remembered Gaara asking him about love. Then there was the Konoha option. Much as he hated to think those leaf fuckers might be right about something, it did seem to be the least terrible option.

It wasn’t like it would be hard, he was basically Gaara’s only tie to his home village, if he said they should leave, Gaara would follow without question. The difficulty was that Gaara wasn’t exactly… subtle. He had a slightly unfortunate tendency to leave a trail of messily dead bodies wherever he went, completely unintentional of course, but it did make him a bit easy to track. Hmm maybe if they went somewhere short on sand it would weaken Gaara’s powers and he could try and teach the kid some control. He wasn’t sure when the idea had moved from idle speculation to the actual planning process, but somewhere in the middle of the Kazekage’s briefing he’d decided to go missing nin. He was so glad Suna didn’t have any Yamanaka.

…

Tenzo had been relaxing in a tree in the top secret root training grounds, and he’d come to an alarming realisation. The small ninjas were cute. He was starting to understand why Kakashi senpai had decided to take one with him when he left. The specific small ninjas that had led him to this conclusion were a pair of the younger root operatives, who were playing a game poorly disguised as training. The older one seemed to be the instigator, the younger one nervous at subverting orders, and Tenzo felt an odd twisting in his chest as he watched them. They’d probably get in trouble for this.

He watched some more and he found himself considering just how easy it would be to walk off with these small ninjas. He was technically their superior officer, if he ordered them to go with him, they’d follow him without question. They could be in a whole different country by the time someone noticed they were gone, and as long as they got clear early there was no reason to think they couldn’t stay free. After all Kakashi senpai had got away with stealing a jinchuuriki, Itachi chan had murdered his entire clan, in the grand scheme of things who was going to notice a couple of baby root agents missing.

It wasn’t like he had any pressing reasons to stay. Kakashi senpai had been his closest friend in Konoha, and he’d left years ago, Danzo was a terrible boss, unreasonable, unstable, and quite possibly dangerously insane, and as far as he’d been able to work out missing nin not only got better paid, they got to choose their own missions, which meant no more bodyguard missions for the daimyo’s wife.

He took time to consider his decision of course. He thought about it for a full half hour as he watched the mini ninja play, and came to a decision as they finished their game. He appeared in front of them in full uniform as they were about to leave, and spoke in the flat mission voice all root nin affected.

“You two come with me. We have a mission. You have ten minutes to go and pack any essential supplies and meet me by the meeting point at the north wall.” He was vaguely impressed by how quickly they reacted. They were waiting by the wall in eight minutes, and asked no questions as they moved stealthily away from Konoha. In fact they were deep into Tea country by the time one of them spoke up. The older one.

“Um, excuse me sir, but if you gave us the mission briefing we might be able to organise our resources more efficiently.” Tenzo had to pause to think about his response. To lie or not to lie. On the one hand, ninja, lying was in the job description, and if he came clean now the kids might choose to obey their training and turn on him. On the other hand the truth was bound to come out eventually and he’d stand a better chance of retaining their trust and therefore loyalty if he minimised the deception. He decided to go for brutal honesty.

“Well about that. Technically there isn’t a mission. I decided to go missing nin and take you with me.”  He was expecting a certain amount of shock, maybe some anger or fear. He wasn’t expecting the younger one to run up to him and hug his legs.

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou. Shin was going to be retired and I was so scared and I didn’t want to be alone but now you stole us, and we heard that some jounins do that but we didn’t think anyone would steal us, but then you did and now we get to stay together forever and Shin won’t be retired.” The little one babbled. Clearly he seemed to lack a brain to mouth filter but at least it explained why despite their conditioning neither of them seemed too upset to be stolen. Tenzo looked over at the older one.

“You’re Shin I assume.” The kid nodded. “And this little one?” Tenzo asked.

“We don’t really know his name, he arrived when he was too young to remember. I call him Sai.”

“Fair enough. So I take it the two of you have no problem coming with me.” Shin smiled.

“It’s better than getting retired, and at least this way Sai will have someone to look after him when I’m gone.” Tenzo nodded along with this until the last part finshed processing.

“Wait, what do you mean when, you’re gone?”

“I’m sick, the bad sort. That’s why they were going to retire me.” And the tone of his voice was so resigned it broke Tenzo’s heart. Not on his watch.

“You’re not going anywhere. Not while I’m around.” He promised with a ruthless dedication.

“But…” Tenzo refused to let Shin get a word in edgeways.

“No buts. If you’re sick we will find you a medic nin, who will make you better. You are not leaving your little brother alone on my watch.”

...

It had been another mission with Hatake Kakashi, and yet another astonishing success. They really did work well together and for some reason their combined luck on missions was amazing. Possibly because all the bad luck was being diverted back to wherever they left the kids. Still at least this time they didn’t come back to a smoking crater in the ground. The building was on fire but there was no crater. Zabuza chose to see this as progress.

“Haku report.” The boy still looked a little shellshocked as he replied.

“Naruto destroyed civilisation.” Zabuza looked around at the charred wasteland that had once been a village, noted the half-starved dog digging through the wreckage, the burnt out cartwheel strategically placed at the crossroads, and the layered graffiti on the walls of  the houses and sighed.

“I can see that. I was hoping you could tell me now.” Haku shuddered.

“It’s kind of a long story.” Zabuza gave in to the impulse to give the boy a comforting pat on the head.

“Just start at the beginning.”

“Well I suppose it started with the porn.” That was not the answer Zabuza had expected.

“Porn?” Haku just nodded sadly before continuing. He was right. It was a long story. It started with Naruto giving an impromptu storytelling session in the town square, that consisted mainly of the plot of Icha Icha paradise. This had enraged certain parties, who had called for widespread censorship on pornographic novels to protect the children, this had in turn enraged the free speech activists, things had escalated from there. Apparently at Haku’s last count there had been over sixty four factions including seventeen religious organisations, five newspapers, three feminist groups (one for pornography, two against), the newly formed sex workers union of rice country, and a group of university students from the capital. No-one was quite sure who first brought out the burning torches and pitchforks, but everyone was now standing rather dejectedly outside the village as the whole place went up in smoke. Zabuza decided discretion was the better part of valour.

After they were safely away from the angry villagers who were just beginning to remember who started the whole mess, Zabuza decided he had some rather pointed questions for Kakashi.

“So Haku tells me Naruto destroyed civilisation by reading pornography to the villagers.”

“I know.” Hatake exclaimed, “Isn’t he so precocious. I didn’t manage to destroy my first village until I was seven.”

“Yes, yes it is rather impressive, it might even be a new record. The point is he did it by reading them pornography.”

“And.” Hatake looked genuinely puzzled.

“Well, the question is how did he manage to memorise the entire plot of Icha Icha paradise?”

“Well he has read it a lot of times. He’s a smart boy, of course he remembers it.”

“He’s read it a lot of times.” Zabuza repeated flatly.

“Well yes, how else was I supposed to teach him to read?”

“You taught him to read using Icha Icha.” Zabuza shouldn’t have been surprised. He _really_ shouldn’t have been surprised. He knew Kakashi was a classic model jounin nutjob. He knew Kakashi, had no social skills and was obsessed with those books. Of course he thought teaching kids to read with pornography was a good idea.

“Of course. It teaches him valuable lessons about life and love at the same time as he learns basic literacy and a love of reading. Besides it was written by his godfather. I think it’s important for kids to find a way to be close to distant family members without actually getting in range of a hunter nin squad.” Kakashi explained seriously.

“You didn’t think that maybe Icha Icha might have been a little innapropriate for such a young kid to be reading.” Zabuza asked without much hope.

“You would think so wouldn’t you, but despite the deep metaphorical and symbolic complexity of the series Jiraya sama’s writing style is actually very clear and concise and suitable or all ages. It’s just another thing that sets Icha Icha apart as one of the great works of modern literature.” Zabuza gave up on subtlety.

“You aren’t supposed to read pornography to five year olds.”

“Really? Why not?” Kakashi asked in genuine incomprehension.

“Because it’s inappropriate.” Zabuza sighed.

“Why?” Zabuza pinched the bridge of his nose and counted backward slowly from ten.

“Because it discusses things that kids are not supposed to be doing until they’re much older.” Zabuza said with infinite patience.

“But we let academy students read books about killing people, even though they aren’t supposed to do that until they graduate.” Kakashi pointed out. The worst thing was he made logical sense. Zabuza had a horrible feeling that if the argument continued Kakashi might actually convince him. The problem didn’t lie in Kakashi’s logic, it lay in the fact that he was apparently missing a vital piece of socialisation that dealt with what is and is not appropriate for children. Come to think of it, when viewed in the light of Kakashi’s background and graduation age it made sense he’d have a slightly skewed idea of what was child friendly. Zabuza gave up. Screw it, he didn’t become a missing nin to teach Sharingan Kakashi people skills. He absent mindedly tossed a kunai at Haku and told him to get dinner, before turning back to Kakashi.

“Whatever. He’s your kid. Just don’t let him read any of that stuff to Haku alright.” Zabuza had enough trouble with the cross dressing, he did not need to add a porn habit to his apprentice’s list of quirks.

_Dear Shizune_

_I know it has been a while since I last wrote to you but I have been very busy with missions and training. I recently learned how to put myself inside an ice mirror, I can think of so many useful application for this skill. How are your poison studies going? Have you managed to fix the dosages on that paralysis poison yet, it sounds very useful._

_I must confess. I am not just writing for our usual catchup. Zabuza sama and I met up with Kakashi san and Naruto early last week. Zabuza sama and Kakashi san went off to do a joint mission, and left me in charge of Naruto. Again. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went. This time he managed to cause the total breakdown of civilisation in one small corner of tea country. The list of places I can no longer safely return to is growing. At least there were no extra dimensional horrors this time, although I’m sure they will be back sooner or later._

_I hope this letter finds you well._

_Your friend, Haku_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally I wasn't going to include Shin in this fic, I was just going to have Tenzo take Sai, but then people commented asking for him, and then I realised that Shin would be a really good excuse to get Tenzo in touch with Tsunade, and so Tenzo got carried away and stole two baby root nins.  
> Sai is still only about five in this fic, and so the brainwashing hasn't gone so far, and he still knows how to be a cuddly little kid. He still says wildly inappropriate things though. It's just cuter coming from a five year old.


	10. Family values

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hyyuga have an unfortunate situation, the peanut gallery find this entertaining, and three different missing nin try and impart valuable life lessons to their kids, with varying levels of success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yashamaru and Tenzo have both been on the run for about a month give or take.

Hiashi had been having a bad night, and it didn’t look like it was going to improve anytime soon. It had started with his daughter getting kidnapped by the Kumo ambassador, escalated when he’d killed the fucker, and now to top it all off, Kumo was demanding his head on a platter in exchange for not declaring war.

The thing was Konoha really couldn’t afford a war at this point. They’d been bluffing their way through international politics for the last five years or so and they really couldn’t afford for anyone to figure out just how paper thin their façade of strength was. Danzo had made it clear they had two options. Give Kumo his head on a platter, or give them his brother’s head on a platter. Danzo didn’t particularly care which, but they had until morning to decide, which basically meant Hiashi had two hours to salvage the situation.

Hizashi was being an unhelpful self-sacrificing idiot of course. It was like he’d never paid any attention to politics at all. Giving Kumo what they wanted would be taken as a sign of weakness. Besides, like hell was he going to kill his brother to appease the bastards that kidnapped his daughter. Not when he’d had a much better idea.

“But Hiashi, Konoha can’t afford a war and the clan can’t afford to lose you. This is the only way.” Hizashi rambled on. Hiashi was not impressed.

“No.”

“But…” Hizashi tried again.

“No. I have a much better idea.”

“What?” Hizashi demanded sulkily. Hiashi sighed, sometimes it was really obvious that he was the older twin.

“All we really need to do is tweak the story a little so that nothing that happened tonight was Konoha’s fault and therefore the village can’t be held responsible.”

“And how are we meant to do that. We’re part of the village, our actions reflect back on the village, we can’t just separate ourselves out like that.” Sometimes, Hiashi thought despairingly, Hizashi could be a little… dense.

“Well I can’t. You’re right the clan needs me. But you can.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?”

“Like I said we need to tweak the story a little. It should probably go something like this. Hyuuga Hizashi went off the deep end, kidnapped his niece, went missing nin and killed the Kumo ambassador on the way out. Sound about right.” Hizashi just stared.

“It’s plausible, considering the ongoing pattern of Konoha desertion. It’s out of everyone’s control, which means it’s not a legitimate excuse for war. And best of all it allows both sides to save face and pretend they weren’t being the lying ninja bastards everyone knows they were.” Hiashi grinned manically. Hizashi gave him a long suffering look.

“Sometimes you frighten me.”

“But you know I’m right.” Hizashi just sighed.

“Yes, you’re right. At least it beats being killed by those Kumo fuckers. But you’d better take good care of my son Hiashi.”

“You look after my daughter, I’ll look after your son. Seems like a fair deal.” Hiashi always did love getting his way. Hizashi chose to ignore the cloud of smugness.

“The things I do for family.”

…

Hyuuga Keitaro, an otherwise uninteresting branch clan jounin, had the attention of the entire jounin lounge, and he was making the most of it. Konoha’s foremost gossip mongers hung off his every word.

“Yes, it’s true.” He told them. “Hizashi has done a Hatake with the clan heiress. Hiashi sama is not pleased.” That set the whole room to whispering.

“But why would he take the clan heiress rather than his own son. Surely it would make more sense to take the less high profile child that he was closer too, rather than his clan heiress.” Aburame Shinta asked, slightly confused.

“Has anyone who’s done a Hatake ever gone for a low profile kid?” Anko wondered aloud, “Seems to me they all tend to grab the most politically volatile kid they can.”

“I heard some guy in Anbu kidnapped a couple of Danzo’s baby root agents a few weeks ago.” Genma pointed out. “That’s like the opposite of high profile. That’s like, so low profile it’s underground.”

“Yeah but that counts as a personal strike against Danzo, which makes it high profile.” Raidou mused.

“I don’t know if there have been enough incidents for us to establish a clear pattern.” Kurenai interjected.

“Kakashi, Itachi, Tenzo, Hizashi, and I’ve heard some rumours out of Suna say one of their jounin ran off with their jinchuriki.” Ibiki counted off on his fingers in a bored tone. “That makes five incidents already, even if you don’t count the more ambiguous incidents like the thing with Tsunade. I’d say that’s enough to star getting a basic idea.”

“Wait you mean it’s spreading.” Hayate burst out in shock. “I thought it was just Konoha.”

“No he’s right I heard about the Suna thing too. Desert Scorpion Yashamaru wasn’t it?” Tsume drawled. Ibiki nodded in confirmation.

“That’s what I heard. The Kazekage was spitting poison over the whole thing. Apparently the jinchuriki was his kid.” Tsume’s eyes showed no sympathy.

“You snooze you lose. If you can’t keep hold of your cubs you don’t deserve to have them.”

“You sound like you support the idea?” Hayate said cautiously.

“Not exactly. I mean obviously the village can’t allow it to continue. But…”

“But what?” Ibiki enquired suspiciously.

“But I can see the temptation. If the cubs are that poorly supervised it’s practically begging for _someone_ to run off with them. And I mean, now that the idea’s out there, if you’re going on the run anyway, why not take the opportunity to grab one.” There was an awkward silence. “What? I’m an Inuzuka, we practically wrote the book on aggressive adoption, back before the village was founded.”

“Ok, moving on from disturbing reminders about clan practices best _left in the past”_ Ibiki said sternly. “Did anyone see the thing with Hizashi coming.”

“Fuck no. Bastard’s far too straight laced. Can you imagine him taking care of all that prissy hair on the run?” Genma burped for emphasis.

“Thank you Genma. We’re all sure you’re very manly.” Kurenai said primly, “But honestly I can kind of see why Hizashi would want to leave. We all know it’s not exactly fun being part of the Hyuuga branch clan.”

“But why take Hinata not Neiji?” Raidou wondered.

“Fuck knows. Maybe she just happened to be closest when he snapped.” Anko speculated. “Anyway all of you are missing the most important thing.”

“And what would that be?” Ibiki asked flatly.

“Why, clearly this has now become enough of a thing to set up a betting pool.” Anko grinned gleefully.

…

The kids were… a little socially stunted. Tenzo felt more than a little underqualified to teach them social skills. It wasn’t like his were much to write home about. Still after the third time someone had run screaming from little Sai’s truly disturbing smile, he decided something had to be done.

He took them to the onsen. It was not a success. Shin had tried to stab two of the other guests for attacking Sai. This would have been more acceptable if the reason they’d been attacking, hadn’t been that he’d peeped over the wall into the women’s side, and then loudly announced that all of the occupants needed to lose weight. Even Tenzo knew that was just asking for pain. He just wondered if he wanted to know where exactly Shin had been hiding the knives.

His second attempt involved taking them to the playground. In retrospect that had been an even worse idea than the onsen. As far as he could work out, Sai had managed, within about forty seconds, to insult the intelligence, parentage, and species of the three toughest kids in the playground, when they reacted predictably, Shin had thrown explosive tags at them. It ended with the playground destroyed, the civilian kids crying, and Tenzo carefully shuffling away with Sai and Shin under his arms before anyone could ask any awkward questions.

He decided he didn’t really know what he was doing, so he went to the bookshop to gather reference material. There were actually a surprising number of books targeted at improving social skills. Admittedly none of them were targeted at brainwashed mini-assassins, which in Tenzo’s view was a bit of an oversight. Given the habits of most ninja villages it seemed like a fairly large unexploited market. Still, he could make do with what was there, he’d just need to… adapt things a bit.

…

“A man must be _mysterious._ ” Kakashi declared imperiously. Naruto gazed up at him with wide curious eyes.

“Why is that, Nii-san?”

“Because it makes us seem alluring, and wise, and that attracts women.” Naruto seemed confused.

“But I already attract women. They’re always running up to me and squeaking about how cute I am.” Kakashi just shook his head sadly.

“Oh little brother. You attract women now because you are five years old and adorable. But that doesn’t last forever. You have six or seven years tops before you become a snotty teenager. You need to plan ahead.” Naruto looked down in embarrassment. Forward planning was not his strong suit. It only lasted a moment before he perked up again.

“Teach me to be mysterious Nii-san. I’ll be the most mysterious ninja ever, dattebayo.” Kakashi’s eye crinkled.

“Of course, Otouto, I will teach you everything you need to know. Now the first step is simple. We will need to get you a mask.”

“A mask, like your one, Nii-san?”

“That’s right. Now a mask serves many purposes. It makes people wonder what you look like, why you are hiding what you look like, what it would take to make you stop hiding. It makes your whole appearance into a _mystery._ It also reminds people that you are a ninja with a dark and dangerous past, which is always sexy.” Naruto nodded furiously as he listened.

“Like in Jiraya sama’s books?”

“Aa that’s right. And of course on a practical note it makes it harder for people to make an accurate description for hunter nins. I’m one of the most famous missing nin’s on the continent and yet when I take off my mask no-one has a clue what I look like. Yes, masks are very useful things, we should definitely get you one.” Naruto looked up at him with starry eyes, and a grin like the sunrise.

“Yes Nii-san, I want a mask just like yours.” Such a cute little brother.

…

Yashamaru sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Gaara.” He asked wearily.

“Yes Uncle Yasha?” Gaara replied innocently.

“What did I tell you about killing people in our hotel room?”

“That if I’m going to get blood everywhere I should take them out to a back alley first.”

“That’s right. And do you know why I said that?” He continued with long suffering resignation.

“Um, plau-si-ble deniability? So that if anyone asks we can pretend it wasn’t us.” Yashamaru looked mournfully at the bloodstains on the carpet and decided the deposit was a dead loss again.

“That’s right.” He sighed again. “So why, exactly is there ninja flavoured jam all over the floor?”

“I’m sorry Uncle Yasha, I didn’t mean to. They just came in through the window and I panicked and mother said their blood would taste good, and I just crushed them. It was an accident.” His eyes were wide, and his lower lip trembled, he really was terrifyingly cute when he didn’t want to get in trouble. Yashamaru was wise to his tricks though.

“First of all what did I say about believing what people tell you?”

“That everybody lies.” Gaara was less tragically cute now and more sulky.

“and so…?” Yashamaru refused to give an inch. It was important to set clear boundaries, and there was no way Shukaku got to replace his sister as the brat’s mother. For one thing he was far more scared of his sister than the bijuu, he did not want to think about the hell she would make his afterlife if he let the kid replace her with a chakra monster.

“And so, just because the chakra monster in my head says it’s my mother, doesn’t mean it’s telling the truth.” Gaara said grudgingly. “But Uncle Yasha, it would be so cool to have a giant chakra monster as a parent.”

“Yes well we can’t always have what we want. Parent’s are one of those things you just get randomly stuck with at birth I’m afraid.”

“But Kaito back in the last village said that if you got adopted you could have new parents, and Shukaku said that they’d adopt me and then they could really be my mother, and it would be so cool.” Sometimes Yashamaru wondered just what he’d done to deserve this. Then he remembered he’d brought it on himself.

“But…” It seemed Gaara was really keen on having a demon parent.

“No.” There was no way Yashamaru was going to chance his sister’s wrath on this one. No matter how much Gaara begged. Gaara turned on the puppy eyes.

“Please Uncle Yasha.” Yashamaru gave in. “They can be your father, you need a replacement father much more than a replacement mother.” And besides, it wasn’t like Gaara’s father could get and _more_ angry with him. It just made strategic sense for him to be the one replaced.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the peanut gallery this week consists of Anko, Ibiki, Hayate, Kurenai, Genma, Raido, and Tsume. Along with a couple of oc's who exist basically to deliver their lines and then vanish into the ether. And a large mass of indeterminate jounin who don't say anything, but listen avidly.  
> And yes Shin's brother complex may just put Itachi's to shame, Gaara is the world's cutest little homicidal maniac, and Kakashi is slowly turning Naruto into a mini me of himself. Gai will be impressed the first time they meet. (Don't worry it's all superficial though, Naruto is still his adorably mayhem causing self.)  
> Hiashi is the slytherin twin, Hizashi is the gryffindor one. Can you tell?


	11. With friends like these...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke and Naruto meet. It's hate at first sight. Kakashi and Itachi leave them unsupervised. Havoc ensues.  
> Meanwhile Tenzo finds Tsunade, and Shizune babysits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke and Naruto are about five, Itachi is about fourteen, Kakashi is nineteen, Shizune is eleven, Sai is probably around six, and Shin is probably around eight (exact ages uncertain because Root). Tenzo is seventeenish.

Kakashi had _heard_ about Uchiha Itachi. When a thirteen year old snaps, murders his entire clan, and kidnaps his little brother before going missing nin, news tends to get around. He suspected Itachi might actually be higher on Konoha’s most wanted list than Kakashi himself, which was an achievement considering Kakashi had stolen the village’s jinchuuriki. Anyway he’d heard about it when Itachi went missing nin, and he’d vaguely expected to run into him at some point, if only because most missing nin tended to end up frequenting similar dodgy bars.

Still he hadn’t expected to run into him in the middle of a stealth assassination mission. It was very awkward. The husband had hired Kakashi to kill his wife, the wife had hired Itachi to kill her husband, and they ran into each other when they both picked the same rooftop vantage point to plan their entrance. It had taken a great deal of whispered discussion to work out a way for both of them to complete their missions and get paid. In the end they’d decided to retreat while they worked out where their respective clients were keeping the money so that they could retrieve it after their missions were complete.

Kakashi was actually quite surprised at how much he liked Itachi, he didn’t have Zabuza’s sadistic sense of humour, or Tsunade’s utterly ridiculous old war stories, but he was gratifyingly impressed by Kakashi. It was actually pretty flattering to find out that it was his inspiration that had led Itachi to take his little brother with him when he abandoned the village.

“And I thought, well if Kakashi senpai could do it then so could I. He’s _my_ little brother. It would be irresponsible to leave him on his own in the village, when I could take perfectly good care of him on the road. He always loved me best anyway.” It was so cute how much he cared for his little brother. Kakashi approved.

“You know we really should introduce Sasuke and Naruto, it would be good for them to have more friends their own age.” Kakashi suggested. Itachi agreed and three hours later they were at the arranged meeting place planning out the final details of the mission, while the kids got to know each other.

…

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at the interloper who’d interrupted his time with his big brother. He was concerned. What if the interloper tried to steal Itachi when he saw how obviously superior he was to his own big brother. He decided to make his position clear from the start.

“You can’t have Itachi. He’s _my_ big brother. You’ll just have to make do with the one you’ve got.” Naruto bristled at the implications.

“Why would I want your stupid big brother anyway? My Kashi nii-san is the coolest big brother in the world, way better than your brother.” Sasuke was horrified, this boy wasn’t just an interloper, he was a _heretic,_ Itachi was clearly the best brother, how could he say something so obviously untrue.

“No he’s not. No-one is better than Itachi nii-san. Itachi nii-san taught me how to destroy a whole village with katon jutsu.”

“Yeah well Kashi nii-san taught me how to cook ramen, dattebayo.” Naruto retorted.

“Tachi-nii once killed a hundred bandits in one minute.” Sasuke was not above exaggeration. It conveyed the spirit of how awesome Itachi was even if it wasn’t exactly true. Like a metaphor.

“Well Kashi nii killed a _thousand_ bandits in a minute. And he has a sharingan.” Naruto just wasn’t all that good at counting yet.

“Well Itachi nii has _two_ sharingan, and I will too one day so there. And Tachi nii used to be Anbu.” Both of their voices had been rising steadily as the argument went on.

“Kashi nii was an Anbu _captain._ He’s way better than Itachi.” That was the point where Sasuke lost his temper and lunged for Naruto. The two of them were far too angry for any kind of technique and the fight quickly dissolved into them rolling around on the floor trying to strangle each other.

The two older ninja glanced over at the noise, Kakashi’s eye crinkled at the corner in amusement and Itachi gave a small quiet smile, it was so good to see the boys getting on so well.

They left the kids with a shadow clone each to supervise while they finished their missions. Naruto and Sasuke were too busy trying to murder each other to notice them leave. This meant that when the shadow clones tried to separate them so they could have lunch they forgot to pull their punches. The inevitable happened, the clones ended up bursting, and Naruto and Sasuke were left unsupervised. It didn’t take long for them to declare an uneasy truce while they tried to find something to eat, and so together they headed off in the direction of the old temple they could see in the distance.

…

 Kakashi and Itachi returned to find the two kids trying to strangle each other in the middle of a smoking crater, while all around them mysterious masked figures danced and chanted and burned incense, and what looked like a sacrificial goat bleated plaintively in the background. They took one look at each other, shunshined in, grabbed the kids, and then shunshined back out again faster than the civilians could see. Then they made a run for it.

Kakashi took out a map and carefully drew a cross in red ink over the area they’d just left. Itachi noticed that the map was already covered in similar red marks in locations from tea country to snow country. He tried very hard not to think about the implications and instead turned to Sasuke.

“What happened?”

“It was Naruto’s fault.” Sasuke replied sulkily.

“No it wasn’t. It was Sasuke-teme’s fault.” Naruto shouted.

“It was your idea to go and investigate the mysterious lost temple.” Sasuke pointed out.

“Well you were the one that lit the mystic fires, and angered the high priest.”

“Well that would have been fine if you’d just apologised instead of challenging the high priest to a dual of the faith and then accidentally banishing him to another dimension.” Itachi’s eyebrows had been rising steadily as the conversation went on but Kakashi appeared unfazed.

“Yeah but then you decided that the best way to fix things was to declare us Gods. I mean, who does that?”

“People who don’t want to be burned at the stake for witchcraft, because _someone_ used unholy dimension warping seals against a priest of a cult that don’t believe in Chakra.” It was at that point Kakashi decided to interrupt.

“Maa, maa children. Lets not get caught up in who caused which holy war. The important thing is that you had fun together while we were gone and no-one got hurt.” Itachi wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed or impressed by how laid back he was.

“Apart from the high priest.” Sasuke pointed out.

“True.” Kakashi admitted.

“And the guards.” Sasuke pressed.

“Well…”

“And all the members of the priesthood that didn’t manage to get out of the temple before it collapsed into a rift in space-time.” Kakashi sighed.

“Allow me to rephrase, aside from random civilians that no-one really cares about anyway, no-one got hurt.”

“So basically as long as Sasuke and Naruto didn’t get hurt, everything is fine?” Itachi checked to clarify.

“Hmm, Yes pretty much.” Itachi thought about it for a while and then nodded. He saw nothing wrong with that reasoning.

…

Tenzo was an elite member of Anbu, trained in many advanced tracking techniques and possessed of many secret skills. It took absolutely none of those techniques to find Tsunade. All he’d had to do was follow the trail of angry debtors. He was almost disappointed.

He found her in a bar, in the process of steadily losing all her money in a game that looked like it might be related to poker, in some twisted, convoluted, and possibly incestuous way. He got her attention by the simple method of sitting in the corner and staring at her creepily until she gave up on trying to ignore him.

Half an hour later and they were sitting together discussing terms and payment over some truly awful local paint stripper. Tenzo was pretty sure it was corroding the inside of his throat. Tsunade was on her fifth glass. He’d left the kids in the charge of Tsunade’s disconcertingly level headed apprentice Shizune, hopefully she’d keep Shin from murdering anyone, they’d gone off to get ramen. Surely even Sai couldn’t start a fight at a ramen stand.

“So let me get this straight. You’ve abandoned Konoha, kidnapped not one but two of Danzo’s creepy brainwashed child assassins, and now you want me to fix the broken one.” Tenzo was deeply impressed, she hadn’t even slurred her words.

“Y’don’t understand. It was _terrible_ in Konoha. Danzo kept on going off on these… these _monologues._ With the wild staring eyes, and the “everyone’s out to get me”, and this furry white cat which just appeared one day. _And_ we weren’t getting paid. I just couldn’t keep working like that.” Tenzo had a dim suspicion that he might be making a scene, but he’d had two glasses of the whatever it was they were drinking, and he was pretty sure that was far too many. Tsunade did at least look vaguely sympathetic.

“Yeah well, I left years ago. It’s good to see other people are finally coming to their senses. The point is why should I fix your creepy homicidal child assassin.”

“Because you’re a kind and caring person who graces the world by your mere presence.” Tenzo suggested hopefully. Tsunade just snorted.

“No I’m a mean, cranky, washed up old drunk. Try again.”

“I’ll pay a weeks worth of bar tabs for you.” Tenzo offered.

“A month.”

“Are you insane? I don’t have that kind of money. Two weeks, and a favour.” Tsunade considerd the offer.

“Make it two favours and you’ve got a deal.” They shook on it and then downed their drinks. Tenzo instantly regretted it, he wasn’t sure he even had a throat left after swallowing that.

…

Dear Haku.

It’s Shizune again. Tsunade shishou got a visitor today. No it wasn’t Kakashi san, it was some random other ex-Konoha nin. Apparently it’s become a real thing now, for Konoha nin. Kidnapping small children and going on the run. I’m not sure why, although I suspect I might be the first example. Not that anyone really remembers. After all I’m not nearly as attention grabbing as Naruto.

Anyway this missing nin had not one but two kids, and apparently one of them is sick, so he came to ask Tsunade shishou to fix him. This would be fine, except these kids are _crazy._ Like, I think they might be worse than Naruto crazy. The younger one (his name is Sai apparently), keeps insulting people. I’m not sure if he does it by accident or on purpose, but either way he has _no_ sense of self preservation. He managed to start a fight at a _ramen stand._ In the space of about ten minutes he managed to mortally offend three local gangs, four members of the village council, two nearby food vendors, and a Buddhist monk. Not only that, but he managed to enrage them all to the point of attempted homicide.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Shin (that’s the older one) decided to take that as his cue to go on a homicidal rampage against anyone who so much as looked at his brother funny. I don’t even _want to know_ where he was keeping all those knives, every time I turned my back he pulled out another one. It’s a miracle no-one was seriously hurt. First Naruto, now these two. I must have done something really bad inn a past life to deserve all this.

In the end I dragged the kids back to our hotel room, tied up Shin, and gagged Sai, before sitting down to write this letter. Hopefully that will keep them contained for a while. I really hope our respective adults will come back soon. Then again, given Shishou likes to discuss business over alcohol, they might just make the situation worse.

Anyway enough about me. How are you doing? Learn any interesting new techniques? Run into Naruto lately? I hope you are doing well.

Yours in deepest solidarity, Shizune.

…

Meanwhile back in Konoha the indistinct shape of a ninja sat in a darkened room and stroked a cat named Mr Tibbles. He didn’t know why he hadn’t gotten a cat before. Mr Tibbles was such a comfort in the face of the inevitable betrayal of all the humans in the village. Maybe he should get another one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes Danzo has become a crazy cat lady.   
> Sasuke and Naruto viciously hate each other, and keep trying to strangle each other. Kakashi and Itachi are completely oblivious and think they're the best of friends, and they're just roughhousing.  
> Tsunade will fix Shin just as soon as the hangover clears.


	12. Bad influences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsunade earns her bar tab, Konoha's council have a slight logic breakdown, Gai is good at spotting potential, and Hizashi has an inordinate amount of sunglasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is spring, and we pick up right where the last instalment left off.

Tsunade was feeling put upon… and hungover, but mostly put upon. The trouble, she decided, with being the best medic in the world, was that everyone and their ninja dog wanted her to fix their weird and wonderful ailments. Was it really too much to ask to be left to wallow in alcohol alone. She bloody retired and abandoned the village, but did that stop people? Oh no it didn’t, it just meant the _missing nin,_ now considered her a perfectly valid source of emergency medical support. Of course she was getting two weeks worth of bar tab paid for looking at this one, so she couldn’t complain too much, but still, it irked her.

At least the brat looked fixable. One of those nasty hereditary lung conditions that was a result of genetic mutations caused by generations of heavy chakra usage, compounded by too much inbreeding in ninja families. She wondered where Danzo had dug this one up. In any case it was totally fixable if caught early enough, and it looked like his new creepy kidnapping ninja dad had brought him to her well within the limits.

She knocked him out while she fiddled with his lung structure, technically he could have been awake. The process wasn’t actually painful, there were no nerve endings in the lungs, but the kid was annoying and fidgety and kept asking questions, and what was the point of being the best medic nin in the world if you couldn’t get away with knocking out irritating patients. It was mostly detail  work to be honest, more down to patience and practice than chakra reserves, so it took a while. Creepy ninja kidnapper dad, had wandered off with creepy brainwashed child assassin number two, presumably to keep out of her way, and Shizune had flounced off hours ago to write another letter to her postal correspondence boyfriend. Honestly that girl had become so dramatic lately, Tsunade hoped it wasn’t the teenage hormonal mood swings starting to surface, she’d dealt with enough of that for a lifetime being stuck on a team with “nobody understands me” Orochimaru, and “look BOOBS” Jiraiya. Surely she’d earned some kind of reprieve. Then again given that she was currently in the throes of the mother of all midlife crises, she probably shouldn’t be casting stones.

In any case everyone else had disappeared, and as the light faded it was just her, and her unconscious patient, and the work that needed doing. It was oddly peaceful.

…

“Something must be done!” Danzo declared grandly. Everyone pretended not to notice the fluffy white cat sitting on his knee. The last person who’d pointed it out had been disappeared in the middle of the night by the not very secret police. There was a rumble of cautious agreement as people waited to see where he was headed.

“In the last four years there have been four incidents in which respectably Konoha ninja have turned traitor and kidnapped pre-genin on their way out. That’s a rate of one per year, this state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue. At this rate there won’t be any pre-genin left.” There was a collective sigh of understanding, so that was what this was about.

“You seem unusually fired up about this.” Shikaku drawled.

“Pre genin are the _future_ of our village! Are you saying this is not a problem that needs to be addressed?” Danzo snapped.

“Do you think he’d be so worried about it if someone hadn’t grabbed a couple of his mini assassins?” Tsume muttered to Shibi. Danzo took no notice, instead choosing to continue his speech.

“We must _take action,_ for the sake of our village’s _future._ It is our _duty,_ as loyal members of Konoha’s council.”

“You know I’m not sure moral crusader is a particularly good look on him.” Inoichi murmured to Chouza, “It’s like a wolf suddenly taking up work as a therapy dog. It just doesn’t fit. Do you think he’s having some sort of breakdown?”

“Give the man a break.” Chouza whispered back. “It’s been a rough few years, we’ve all been under a lot of pressure.”

“And so we shall _stand firm,_ against the _forces of evil,_ that seek to undermine us at every turn. And future generations will remember this day, as the day we all declared, _no more.”_ Danzo continued, seemingly oblivious to the background commentary.

“Then again he is laying it on a bit thick.” Chouza mused. Tsume snorted.

“I blame the cats. Nothing good ever comes from fluffy white cats.”

It took a while for Danzo’s speech to wind down. The trouble was he wasn’t exactly _wrong,_ just a little, _overenthusiastic._ Something did need to be done about the situation. The village really couldn’t afford to be haemorrhaging pre-genins at a time it was already weakened. If only because it looked bad.

“I really don’t see what we can do about it though.” Hiashi pointed out sensibly. If we could stop people from going missing nin we would have done it already.

“Personally I reckon this whole problem arose because people don’t guard their cubs properly.” Tsume retorted. Mostly to see Hiashi squirm. Koharu picked up on her suggestion though.

“You know you might be right. We do leave the pre-genin pretty much unguarded in this village. I mean it’s not like the chuunin sensei could stop them if a jounin decided to just walk into the academy and grab one.”

“Hmm. Maybe we should look into posting guards around the academy. It might at least limit the numbers of abductions a little.” Homura suggested.

“Then it is settled we shall place a jounin guard around the academy to protect the students.” Danzo declared, satisfied with the plan. Everyone present had a niggling feeling there might be a flaw in the plan, but the meeting had already run over by an hour and it was time for lunch. No-one wanted to be the one responsible for dragging things out.

…

Hizashi wondered if there was some kind of guide book for being a missing nin, that he’d somehow missed. He’d been on the run for weeks and he still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be doing. At least his darling niece Hinata was a sweet and well behaved girl. He shuddered to think what this would have been like if he’d been stuck with a little hellion like he vaguely remembered Sasuke being. Maybe he should find another missing nin and ask for advice.

He sighed. Honestly he had no idea where to even start looking for them. It wasn’t like they’d just randomly show up on his doorstep. He left little Hinata sleeping in their hotel room, surrounded by pretty much every trap known to ninja kind, while he went to look for work. Hiashi had given him some money, but it only went so far, especially after he’d brought both himself and Hinata a full set of sunglasses for every occasion.

Right at that moment he was wearing set no. 21, shady individual looking for employment, if he found some he’d switch to either set no. 18 competent unflappable professional, or set no. 5 bad motherfucker, depending on the specific sort of work he found. He was halfway through negotiating a contract to guard a caravan to volcano country, when he sensed it. Even after so many years Hatake chakra was unmistakable. What a stroke of luck. If he could catch Hatak in time, he might just be able to get the advice he so badly needed.

He completed his negotiations quickly, and went in search of his fellow missing nin. He managed to track him to a hotel not dissimilar to the one he and Hinata were staying in, which was already occupied by the overpowering chakra signature of what could only be the jinchuriki Hatake kidnapped. He activated his Byakugan to get the lay of the land, and then deactivated it almost immediately in horror. No, it couldn’t be.

It was. He reactivated his byakugan just to double check, and Hatake was definitely reading porn in public. There was no way he could allow his darling niece anywhere near such a bad influence. The man had probably already corrupted little Naruto, so he would have to be kept away from Hinata too. Avoidence was clearly the only viable strategy.

He hurried Hinata out of the village wearing the bright yellow framed sunglasses set no. 14, clueless and innocent tourist, with Hinata wearing set no. 7 cute little girl, the ones with the flowers on the frames. She liked those ones. He was pretty sure they’d managed to escape unobserved. His new temporary employer had given him an odd look when he’d asked to rendezvous outside the village, but since he was getting a jounin level ninja escort for roughly half the price he should be paying he wasn’t going to complain. In any case Hizashi was willing to endure any number of funny looks to keep his niece from being corrupted by such… degenerate elements.

…

Gai was one of the first jounin assigned to the new academy guard rotation, mostly because everyone else had conveniently found themselves elsewhere when Shikaku went looking for victims. Gai didn’t mind. It was an opportunity to safeguard the youth of Konoha, and as long as he kept his attention on the academy, no-one minded if he worked on his training while he worked. Gai was excellent at multi-tasking, the best in Konoha. It was a shame his eternal rival had left the village really, because that could have been a wonderful basis for a challenge. Sometimes he really did miss Kakashi. He shook off his unyouthfully depressed thoughts. It was a beautiful spring morning, guarding the youth of Konoha. There was no sense in dwelling on things that couldn’t be fixed.

He relaxed into the distant sounds of children playing. Soothing and relaxing, as long as you didn’t listen too close to what they were actually saying. The academy officially closed mid-afternoon, but plenty of the kids stayed later to use the training grounds. Gai approved, it was never too soon to foster the power of youthful energy. Technically his shift ended when the academy session did but he didn’t mind staying a little longer so that the kids could safely get some proper training in.

Most of them left after a couple of hours, even the overachievers didn’t stay more than three or four, but just as Gai was about to leave he noticed that one of them was still there, practicing, two hours after all of his peers had gone home.

The next day Gai was back guarding the academy, and he noticed the same kid staying late again. He wasn’t much to look at, small, dark hair, dark eyes, nothing to mark him out from all the other hordes of small children that swarmed around the academy, but the sheer determination he practiced with, that was something special. Gai prided himself on being a good judge of character, and something about that kid caught his attention.

On the third day he swapped shifts with Genma so that he could continue his observations. The boy was failing his classes. He clearly had no gift for ninjutsu, that much was clear from the abject failure of his patient dogged attempts to perform a henge. It was equally clear that he wasn’t really one for written work. He wasn’t bottom of the class, but it obviously didn’t come naturally. The teacher’s attitude made it clear that the boy, Lee apparently, was expected to fail.

But Gai remembered the determined way the boy ran through kata after kata alone on the practice fields as the light faded. The sheer refusal to give up as he practiced his throws until constant misses became reliable hits. There was something there. A talent for hard work that very few people possessed. A talent that all taijutsu masters needed. Ninjutsu masters could coast by on talent, genjutsu was pretty much entirely down to the user’s imagination, but taijutsu required something more. Talent helped, but in the end it could only ever carry you so far in a discipline that by its very nature required constant hours of conditioning just to maintain the abilities you already had.

He didn’t return to the academy on the fourth day. It really wouldn’t look good if people started to think he was stalking the pre-genin. Especially not in light of recent events, and Gai wasn’t an idiot. People knew he’d been friends with Kakashi, it wouldn’t take much for them to jump to conclusions. Especially since he wasn’t entirely sure they’d be the wrong conclusions. The kid had potential, and th academy was clearly wasting it.

Not that he was actually going to kidnap the boy, that would be wrong. He probably had a home and a family. And in case he obviously had a future planned out as a ninja of Konoha. Gai wouldn’t take that from him. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d be stuck in the academy forever, Gai could take him on as a student when he graduated. As long as that fool of an academy teacher let him graduate.

It wasn’t a problem. There were strings Gai could probably pull to make sure the kid made it. Still, it couldn’t hurt to investigate Lee’s living conditions. Just in case the situation changed. It was important to keep options open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And today's council meeting included, Danzo, Shikaku, Inoichi, Chouza, Tsume, Shibi, Hiashi, Koharu, and Homura. Danzo continues his metamorphosis into a bond villain, with a hundred cats, everyone is too polite/has too much self preservation, to draw attention to it. And yes the cuncil did just order the jounin to protect the pre genin from... the jounin. They probably could have thought that through a little better  
> And finally we see Gai. I've been planning this for a while. I'm sure you can all see where it's going.  
> The Hyuuga are the undisputed masters of sunglasses disguises. Hizashi has a pair for every conceivable occasion and a few inconceivable ones. He is also very worried about bad influences on his adorable, innocent niece. (her rebellious teenage years will probably give him a stroke.)


	13. Leading by example

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kakashi teaches Naruto elemental jutsu, Gai steals a small child, the peanut gallery is horrified, Haku meets Sasuke and is creeped out, and Zabuza makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is, the moment you've all been waiting for. Gai steals Lee, and starts moulding him in his own youthful image.

Kakashi had the sinking feeling he might have created a monster. It wasn’t that there was anything _wrong_ with what he’d taught Naruto, not in principle. It was a fairly standard C-rank futon jutsu, good to start him off on and let him get the hang of elemental ninjutsu. It was just, well, Naruto had never quite managed to get the hang of moderation. As the flattened forest in front of them could attest to.

“You know otouto, while that was very… impressive, I think we might need to work on your subtlety a little bit.”

“Sorry Ni san, I just got overexcited. It was just so cool. I’m going to be the most awesome ninjutsu master _ever._ ” He was such a _cute_ little natural disaster though. Kakashi really couldn’t stay angry with him for long. He smiled. Oh well, it wasn’t like the forest could get any _more_ destroyed, they might as well carry on.

“Of course you will. Say Naruto, how would you like to try learning a Katon jutsu.” The brilliant smile that lit up Naruto’s face was all the justification Kakashi needed.

…

Just to make things absolutely clear Gai had not been stalking the kid. Stalking was a deeply unyouthful pastime that he would never get involved in. He’d just been keeping an eye out, making sure the boy lived up to his most youthful and vigorous potential.

Ok so maybe he’d left a few mysterious gifts for him. It was all to aid in his training. Like the weights he’d left by the door of Lee’s room, or the green training suit that had mysteriously appeared in his wardrobe, or the first aid kit he’d left on his bedside table that time he’d managed to slice his hand open with a poorly caught kunai. He was just looking out for the wellbeing of a future fellow taijutsu expert. The point was he had not in any way been planning to steal Lee, just help him out a bit on his road to becoming a ninja.

Then the academy had proved it was staffed by incompetent morons who wouldn’t recognise true talent if it started running round the village upside down while wearing a green jumpsuit. There was clearly no youth in their souls. They had kicked Lee out for his lack of talent in ninjutsu.

Gai had considered arguing about it, or pulling strings to get Lee back in, but it was painfully obvious that they didn’t appreciate Lee’s talent. They had failed to nurture Lee’s youthful vigour, and forcing them to take him back wouldn’t change their inability to provide the supportive environment Lee deserved. No there was clearly only one solution. He would have to follow the example of his hip and cool rival and _take_ the boy. For his own good.

It had proved surprisingly easy in the end. Lee had wandered off alone, depressed after being expelled from the academy, and it had been the work of a moment to snatch him up and carry him off. He was jounin, and not a weak jounin at that, he might be loud and obnoxious on his downtime but he knew how to be stealthy when the situation called for it. No-one noticed as he slipped out past the Anbu patrols. In fact no-one noticed until they were far past the point of easy pursuit.

Lee hadn’t even put up much of a fight, when he realised he was being kidnapped. Especially not once he realised Gai actually _wanted_ him, that for once there was an adult who believed in him and wanted to guide and support him. Everyone knew that sometimes jounin stole kids, the academy instructors made a point of warning them all about it. Lee had evn occasionally fantasised about some jounin coming to take him away and look after him and teach him to be an awesome ninja. He’d just never expected one of them to actually want to take _him._ Useless Lee who couldn’t even do ninjutsu. But then it happened, and he found he really didn’t want to fight it. It wasn’t like he had much tying him to the village anyway. He was an orphan with no close friends and he’d just watched his dreams of becoming a ninja go up in smoke.

Except maybe they hadn’t. Gai senpai said that he would train him to be the most youthful taijutsu master in the elemental nations and his enthusiasm was infectious. Yosh, Lee would train hard and make Gai senpai proud of him.

…

“Gai has just done a Hatake.” The jounin lounge fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop. Genma smirked and sat back to enjoy the shock his words had instilled in his fellow ninja.

“You mean… _Maito_ Gai.” Hayate ventured.

“Yep” Genman grinned.

“The beautiful green beast of Konoha, Maito Gai.” Hayate pressed.

“Is there another one?” Everyone paused to consider the possiblilty of there being more than one Maito Gai and dismissed the thought with a shudder. The world was not ready.

“Which kid did he take.” Anko dug gleefully for details.

“Some academy student called Rock Lee.” Genma replied, “Apparently Gai saw him when he was on academy guard rotation, and decided the kid had the flames of youth. A few weeks later the kid gets kicked out of the academy and never comes home. Gai is nowhere to be found. And the Anbu investigators find a green jumpsuit hanging up in the kid’s wardrobe.”

“So basically Gai kidnapped the kid because he thought he could turn him into a mini him.” Anko summerised. The look of dawning horror on many jounins faces was deeply satisfying.

“He wouldn’t.” Inoichi said without conviction.

“Honestly I’m surprised it took him this long. Or have you all forgotten who his eternal rival is?” Ebisu pointed out sensibly. “Anything Hatake does, Gai does with twice as much enthusiasm. Or did you not remember the challenges.” There was an awkward shuffling of feet that indicated that a number of people had indeed forgotten the challenges, presumably by sheer force of will and the application of copious amounts of alcohol.

“Well look at it this way.” Kurenai said with forced brightness. “At least it’s now no longer our problem. He’s left the village. If he creates a mini-me it’s the rest of the world that will suffer, likewise if he restarts his rivalry with Hatake. We don’t have to deal with it.” She looked around suspiciously. “Unless the rest of you were planning to go missing yourselves.”

“No not at all. That would be absurd. Even if it did get us out of paperwork.” Shikaku replied innocently. “None of us has ever even considered such a thing.”

“Right.” Ibiki looked suspicious. “So, anyway what are we going to do about the jounin guard. Seeing as clearly it had the opposite effect to the one intended.”

“Now, now don’t be hasty.” Genma interjected, “One incident is far from enough to draw that kind of pattern from. The idea is perfectly sound.”

“The idea was flawed from the outset and you know it.” Ibiki responded drily, “You just like the fact that it’s an opportunity to play cards while on duty.”

“Well…” Genma twitched uncomfortably.

“Anyway, it’s not like anyone's going to go to Danzo with this unless they absolutely need to. Not with the way his office has started to stink of cat urine.” Tsume pointed out. There was a rumble of agreement. No-one wanted to brave Danzo’s office these days, if the smells didn’t get you the monologues would.

“So we do nothing?” Ibiki asked.

“Yeah pretty much.” Anko drawled. “By the way, Genma, Raido, and Yugao all owe me money for the bets they made, and congratulations Ebisu, you win. All of you come and see me by midnight tonight so we can straighten this all out ne.”

…

Zabuza kept a suspicious eye on the last two Uchiha. He’d asked Hatake for backup on a large scale property damage mission, only to be told that he was on the other side of the continent, and therefore unable to help. Instead he’d offered an introduction to Uchiha Itachi, with assurances that he was perfectly competent, and an excellent partner as long as you didn’t fuck with the little brother.

Nothing Hatake had said was wrong precisely, but fuck had he understated the size of Uchiha’s brother complex, both Uchihas that was, because the little one was just as homicidally overprotective as the older one. It took a full hour to pry baby Uchiha, off of big Uchiha’s leg, and escape to do the mission, and the kid was _not_ pleased. Zabuza felt slightly sorry for Haku who’d been left on babysitting duty, not sorry enough to switch places, but sorry enough to buy him some chocolates or something on the way back maybe.

At least big Uchiha was as useful on the mission as Hatake had promised. Kid had a positive flair for Katon jutsus and the faintly psychotic grin that cracked his normally expressionless face as he set the castle on fire made him seem far more approachable. Less creepy zombie nin, more someone who Zabuza could cut loose and have some fun with. He could _work_ with a genuine pyro. He bared pointed teeth at Itachi in an approximation of a smile before unleashing a large scale Suiton attack. Kid got the hint, and blasted another higher level katon jutsu in the same direction. The resulting steam explosion was a thing of beauty. If Zabuza had been more sentimental he would have cried. He might have had his doubts at first, but Hatake really came through on this one.

He was slightly concerned about what sort of smoking crater they might be returning to though. Little Uchiha had looked like trouble.

…

_Dear Shizune_

_I had heard there seemed to be a lot more Konoha nin going on the run with kids these days. It seems to be becoming a pattern. I’m not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing. I really hope they aren’t all like Naruto, I love him dearly but I don’t know if the world could survive more than one. Heaven help us if he ever manages to figure out a clone jutsu._

_Speaking of other Konoha nin on the run with kids, I recently came in contact with the Uchiha’s. Zabuza sama needed some support on a mission so Hatake san introduced him to Itachi. I think it went ok but well… I never thought I’d be saying this, but I miss babysitting Naruto. Yes he’s insane, and ridiculous, and I still haven’t figured out how we ended up becoming the God Kings of that volcano cult, but at least his heart is in the right place. Today I was left in charge of Uchiha Sasuke, and I’m not sure my nerves will ever recover. That kid is completely psychotic. And he wasn’t pleased with me for being party to separating him from his brother. I didn’t dare to sleep, because I had this sneaking suspicion he might set me or possibly the entire forest on fire._

_That would have been bad enough, but it got worse, about three hours into our acquaintance, he decided he was bored and we should go and explore. We ended up going into the village, and I stepped away for a moment to buy some dango, so I’m not sure what happened next. What I do know is that somehow in the three minutes I wasn’t watching him, Sasuke managed to declare war on a tiny alien civilisation living in the mayor’s flower boxes, burn the mayors house down in the course of the battle, cause a civil war among the villagers as they chose one side or the other, and get both of us assigned to community service building them a new village after the peace treaty was signed, as a symbol of their new unity._

_Then we went back to our campsite and I proceeded to stay up all night watching the kid to make sure he didn’t kill anyone, for daring to assign him community service. Some of his threats were uncomfortably creative for a five year old. There was one about hot pepper sauce, rusty kunai, ration jutsu and the mayors own spleen that I was very impressed by. I’m not sure he knew how to carry out all of those threats but I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t at least try so, I watched him just in case._

_I am now sleep deprived, mentally scarred, and have a whole new appreciation for those bingo book warnings about all Uchiha being pyromaniacs, and the worst thing is Zabuza sama had a wonderful time with Itachi san, so I will most likely have to deal with all this again on a regular basis._

_I hope your situation with the new pair of kids is under control. Has Tsunade san fixed the older one yet? Did you manage to keep the younger one from getting himself killed? Did you manage to keep from killing him yourself?_

_Your friend, Haku._

...

Gai had been on the run for a week before an amazing idea occurred to him.

“Lee, my youthful student! I must introduce you to my hip and cool rival and his student. It has been far too long since we held a challenge, and I know he will be most excited to meet you.” Lee grinned in excitement before asking.

“But Shishou do you know where your rival is?” Gai gave him a thumbs up before declaring.

“Never fear, I shall find him in a week. And if I fail I will swim all the way to the ruins of Uzushio with one hand tied behind my back.”

“Wow. You’re so cool Shishou. I want to be just like you when I grow up.”

“Yosh, with youthful determination and effort you shall be.” Far away the village of Konoha gave a collective shiver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I now have a vague outline up to chapter 21, many awesome things happen, and Haku and Shizune finally get to meet. Mostly as compensation for all the chaos they will have to deal with.


	14. The morning after the night before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Genma and Raido wake up to the consequences of tequila, Hizashi almost exposes his niece to the influence of Tsunade, the other villages have a horrible feeling Konoha might have started yet another irritating trend, and Naruto acquires the world's most inconvenient summons contract.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No Gai or Lee in this one i'm afraid, but next chapter they track down Kakashi.

Genma woke up to a disgustingly beautiful spring morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Genma was feeling an irresistible urge to burn it all to ashes with a katon jutsu.

He groaned experimentally, and felt the throbbing pain in his head intensify, his stomach was still twisting itself up in queasy knots, and his mouth tasted like an army of ninken had got together and had a party in it. He didn’t know what had happened last night but it must have been truly spectacular.

He tried opening his eyes, wary of the dangers of bright lights interacting with headaches, and almost immediately regretted it. He closed them again in the vague hope that everything would go away. After a couple of minutes he tried again, opening just one eye this time. No such luck, he closed it again.

“Raido.” He said with in a tone that spoke of a thousand regrets. “Tell me we didn’t didn’t get drunk and do a Hatake with the mini InoChikaCho’s last night.” Raido grumbled a little unwilling to be woken up so early. Genma could pinpoint the exact moment he opened his eyes because that was when the swearing began. It lasted for six solid minutes and he only repeated himself a total of three times. Genma was impressed.

“I wasn’t just hallucinating then.” Genma sighed, before opening his eyes again to look at three curious little faces staring down at him. A few feet away Raido was sitting up and looking about as terrible as Genma felt.

“What were we drinking last night?” Raido asked, without much hope of an answer.

“I don’t know, but I’m about sixty seven percent sure it was Anko’s fault.” It was a fairly safe bet. When faced with a night out gone horribly wrong, it was usually Anko’s fault.

“Where is Anko then?”

“Probably back in her apartment in the village laughing at us. You know she always comes out on top in this sort of situation.” They took a moment to contemplate their situation, before the little blonde Yamanaka decided she was fed up of being ignored.

“So where are we going now?” She demanded, hands on hips. “You said that if we went with you we could get some of that amazing chocolate from moon country.” Her voice was uncomfortably piercing.

“We did?” Raido wondered out loud while Genma tried to get his thoughts together.

“Didn’t your parents tell you not to follow strangers who promised you sweeties?” He asked, in the end, for lack of a better response.

“Well yeah, but you’re jounin. Everyone knows jounin kidnap kids and take them on adventures.” It was the Nara who spoke up this time, with all the lazy assurance of his family.

“Right. Of course.” Genma rubbed his head trying to dispel some of his hangover. “Right, minions. Make yourselves useful, go and find some water and make us a cup of tea while we work out what to do next yeah.” With some chivvying from the Yamanaka girl the kids got up and wandered off in search of a stream. With the minions gone, Genma looked at Raido, who looked back at him with absolutely nothing positive to contribute to the situation.

“We’ve really gone and done it this time haven’t we?” He sighed. Genma repressed the urge to strangle him.

“Yeah, I’d gathered that much. So what are we going to do now?” Genma demanded, hoping for a constructive response. Raido utterly failed to oblige.

“Well, I suppose we start looking for work as missing nin.” Deep breaths, Genma took deep breaths.

“That’s your solution. No lets go back to the village and try to explain, no we can fix this. Your solution is to go with it and drag a full set of politically combustible brats around the elemental nations while we do mercenary work.” Raido just gave him a deeply sceptical look.

“Go back to the village and explain. Really. How would that go? I’m sorry Shikaku we accidentally stole your kid while on a drunken bender, but it’s all ok we’re back now and we’re very sorry. Yeah thts going to go down a treat.” The man had a point.

“Ok, but seriously. We’re taking kids with us on our new mercenary careers?” Genma was _not_ sold on parenthood, it hadn’t been featured in his plans at all. Honestly he’d known drunken benders could result in accidental parenthood, but he hadn’t expected it to be so… instant.

“Why not. It seems to work for Kakashi.” Ok fine, it seemed like Raido _was_ sold on parenthood, judging by the gooey look on his face as he watched the little blond bossing around the boys like a miniature general, clearly Genma didn’t get a vote. Parenthood had arrived whether he’d planned for it or not.

“Alright fine. But you’re giving them the talk.”

…

Hizashi was surprised when he saw Tsunade of the Sannin wandering down the street. He wondered if maybe he should go and talk to her. It wasn’t like she was still on speaking terms with the village after all, and his darling Hinata could probably use a medical checkup. He observed quietly as she walked into a bar. And then he waited, and waited, and waited, hours later she finally came out, drunk as a lord. Hizashi was horrified. He continued to watch in shock as she wandered from bar to bar over the course of the evening, drinking and gambling, and getting involved in no less than three separate bar fights, two of which she instigated. It was like sitting and watching as the people in the house across the street left their teenage kids in charge of the house. It was painful to see.

And this was one of the Sannin, the pride of Konoha? It was disgraceful. What was the world coming to when respected role models behaved like that in public? He needed to make sure to keep Hinata well away from that woman. She was obviously a terrible influence.

They escaped using one of the more high profile disguises in his arsenal, mainly because Tsunade didn’t seem to be paying much attention to any social strata above petty criminal. Hizash wore set no. 20 expensive bodyguard, and Hinata wore set no. 6 poorly disguised B list celebrity. They skipped town in a flurry of autograph papers, and no-one suspected a thing.

…

Orochimaru had the sinking suspicion he might have messed up. In his defence he hadn’t known taking small kids with you when you defected was going to become such a big thing. Now everyone was doing it and he was all alone, and no-one believed he was a proper Konoha missing nin. It was getting harder and harder to get people to take him seriously, and that was when he succeeded in convincing them he wasn’t a spy. People seemed to take his lack of small child as a sign that he either wasn’t skilled enough to escape with one, or that he was too creepy to persuade one to go with him. (For some reason most people seemed to believe the latter.) In any case it was damaging his reputation. And if there was a small, well buried part of him that thought it might be… nice, to help guide a curious young mind through the understanding of scientific advancement, well passing your teachings on was a _kind_ of immortality. He wasn’t going soft at all.

He wondered if there were rules about which kids you could take. Would any random small child do or would he have to return to Konoha to steal one. It would obviously have to be a child with scientific interests, otherwise what would be the point. Hmm maybe a medic, it would be useful to have someone who could help keep his test subjects alive longer, and it would also seriously piss Tsunade off. He’d turned evil he was allowed to be petty.

…

Kakashi stared a bit. He suspected Naruto might have really outdone himself this time.

“Isn’t it _so cool_ Nii-san.” Naruto babbled happily.

“Yes it is very cool otouto. But don’t you think it might be a tad… inconvenient?” Kakashi inquired diplomatically. Naruto just looked blank. Kakashi tried again.

“It’s just that, while I agree they are very impressive, they are kind of… limited in terms of where you can use them.”

“But look nii-san, look at the _tentacles.”_ Kakashi looked obligingly at the tentacles. They were indeed very impressive, they had razor sharp hooks on the end, and what looked like venom sacs. They were also large enough to crush a decent sized fishing trawler in their coils. They were the kind of tentacles any self-respecting monster from the abyss could be proud of. But still that didn’t change the facts.

“Naruto, Krakens can’t breathe air, in fact if you try and summon them anywhere above a depth of about a thousand feet below sea level, they will explode due to the pressure differential. Deep sea creatures don’t work on land.” Kakashi wavered in the face of Naruto’s puppy dog eyes. Screw it, he was the cool older brother not the responsible parent. If Naruto wanted the most inconvenient and yet spectacular summons contract in the world then Kakashi wouldn’t stand in his way.

“Fine go ahead. Have you tried summoning the boss ninkraken yet?” Naruto shook his head firmly.

“No Cthulu kun said that I can’t summon the Great Old One until the stars come right otherwise she’ll be angry and eat everyone in a hundred square mile radius, and won’t let me sign the contract.” Kakashi thought about that for a moment, before shrugging, after all the snake contract was worse.

“Fair enough. So when do the stars come right then?”

“Umm.” Naruto held a quick whispered conference with the summon, who was apparently named Cthulu. “Half past eleven next Thursday.”

“I’ll clear our schedule. Is there anything else you’ll need?” Boss summons often had strange requirements, Jiraiya’s toads required a full merchant caravan of good sake. Naruto held another whispered discussion with Cthulu.

“Um he said that the blood of a hundred virgins was traditional, but the Great Old One appreciates that virgins can be hard to come by in this day and age, so she’ll settle for a sacrificial goat, and all the old chants done properly.” Kakashi noted those details down. The goat shouldn’t be too hard to manage and as long as Naruto didn’t have to memorise the chants he’d be fine.

…

There was a rumour going around, the villages. Or maybe more than a rumour, a _warning,_ apparently Konoha nin had started to take up kidnapping when they went missing. Curious spymasters listened closer, and managed to divine names, Hatake Kakashi, Uchiha Itachi, Hyuuga Hizashi, Tenzo not low profile names, and the names of the children were equally damning, Uchiha, Uzumaki, Hyuuga. So far they’d stuck to kids from their own village but there was no gurantee it would remain so.  The better spymasters listened closer still, heard names that were not of Konoha, Zabuza, Yashamaru, and realised that there was no gurantee the phenomenon would remain limited to Konoha jounin either. That was the trouble with ideas. They tended to spread.

Certain heads of villages did wonder to themselves why so many of the most spectacularly poorly thought through ideas seemed to originate in Konoha. Sealing bijuu into human containers and then handing them out to try and deter war, idea started in Konoha, bringing together a group of clans that hated each other to form a village, idea started in Konoha, fucking Orochimaru, started in Konoha. And now, betraying your village and going on the run wth a small child looked to be the latest bad idea started in Konoha. A whole host of village leaders would have been horrified to realise how closely their thoughts were aligned. What had the treehugging morons started _this time?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Naruto summons eldritch horrors from the depths of the ocean. No they are not usable anywhere except the open ocean. Think of it like owning a nuclear submarine in the middle of the sahara desert. It's very powerful and advanced, but utterly useless in most contexts.  
> Genma and Raido have left the village and taken baby InoShikaCho with them. They really don't remember what they were thinking, but it's too late to turn back now.  
> Isn't it funny how everything that goes wrong in the ninja world seems to start in Konoha. The other villages certainly think so. They get especially annoyed over the way Konoha keeps insisting they're doing it with the best of intentions.


	15. Ways to advance your career

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi meets an old friend, Itachi makes a new friend, Genma and Raidou get a job, and Orochimaru discovers the joys of teaching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set about a week after Genma and Raido left Konoha.

Orochimaru couldn’t believe his luck. The boy, his shiny new apprentice, was _perfect._ He hadn’t even been looking for a child to steal when he went in to do recon on Konoha. Honestly he’d just been trying to get the lay of the land an check what Danzo was up to. But then on his way out, he’d tripped over an adorable little silver haired kid doing an almost professional job of vivisecting one of the leeches from the forest of death and he hadn’t been able to resist. It was the work of a moment to tranquilise the kid and carry him off. He was a Konoha missing nin, it was practically a requirement. He wasn’t getting soft, he was just… keeping up with popular trends.

Kabuto it turned out his new student’s name was and he was surprisingly relaxed about having been kidnapped by a notorious missing nin. Apparently he was an orphan, and most Konoha kids now accepted jounin kidnappers as one of life’s unavoidable hazards. Some of them, especially the orphans, actually tried to seek it out. Kabuto had never bothered, but upon being stolen by the greatest scientific mind of the age he was quick to see the benefits.

He still couldn’t quite believe his luck, almost tripping over such a brilliant young mind to nurture. He couldn’t have found a better apprentice if he’d tried. Kabuto was an aspiring young scientist with a talent for medical jutsu. Thhe kid was a genius, and a kindred spirit, and his sheer joy in learning and scientific progress reminded Orochimaru of himself as a child. He hadn’t known having a protégé could be so inspirational. Kabuto’s enthusiasm and fresh perspective reignited Orochimaru’s own joy in Science. For too long he’d been focused on the results rather than the joy of exploration, but now with his bright eyed curious student present he found himself truly appreciating his work once more.

Kabuto’s delighted smile when Orochimaru had shown him his labs, and research notes had been… nice. Orochimaru wasn’t sure what to do with the warm fuzzy feeling that developed as Kabuto asked him questions about everything under the sun and suggested a new medical technique that could keep half dead test subjects in suspended animation indefinitely, for later study. Maybe he should teach the boy sealing. There were all kinds of potential biological applications that Orochimaru had never had time to explore

“Orochimaru sama”, Kabuto interrupted his train of thought, “I had this really awesome idea for cybernetically enhanced limbs. Can I have one of the test subjects to try it out on?” Orochimaru felt so proud. Eight years old and already coming up with his own experiments. He was just so _cute_ in his little labcoat and goggles, standing over a test subject with a scalpel and a look of intense concentration. Orochimaru just couldn’t resist taking a photo. It could go in the album along with Kabuto’s first human dissection, and Kabuto’s first death ray, and Kabuto’s first accidental summoning of an abyssal creature from the twelfth dimension. If this was what having a kid felt like then no wonder Tsunade had taken one when she left the village. Next time he saw Jiraiya he would _have to_ show him his photo album.

…

Kakashi and Naruto had been relaxing quietly at a seaside resort while they burned off the money they’d earned on their last job. It was a nice resort. Targeted mainly at missing nin, rogue samurai, off duty spies, rich bandits, and other people with money to burn and a desire not to draw the attention of the law. The sheer variety of dodgy customers, ensured an uneasy kind of truce, _no-one_ wanted to be responsible for starting the free for all brawl that would call the authorities down on the facility, and ruin the holidays of all the meanest criminals in the area. The armed détente was actually surprisingly relaxing. Kakashi liked it there a lot. He had got to relax by the pool while being served peeled grapes and cocktails by scantily clad waitresses. Naruto had got to run wild on the adventure playground. Things had been… peaceful.

Then Kakashi heard a sound in the distance, a not quite echo on the wind. Someone almost on the edge of hearing shouting _“Rival”_ in an all too familiar voice _._ He dismissed it as his imagination running wild. After all there was absolutely no reason for Gai to be there. Gai was back in Konoha a thousand miles away. It had been _years._ It wasn’t like Gai had any way of knowing where he was.

Then he heard it again closer. Surely not. It couldn’t be. Kakashi had a feeling denial wasn’t going to help him this time.

He was right.

Actually for a second Kakashi thought he was seeing double as two green jumpsuits made their way towards him at high speed. But no, one of them was considerably smaller than the other, for all the uncanny resemblance. A small child, that looked like Gai, and dressed like Gai, and as far as he could tell acted like Gai. Had Gai… spawned?

It turned out the kid wasn’t actually blood related to Gai. Apparently Gai had met the kid, been impressed by his flames of youth, and decided to steal him. Sort of like Kakashi had done with Naruto, but with a little more buildup. At least that was what Kakashi gathered from the dramatic speech Gai made. Kakashi was reluctantly impressed, it had taken him years to get Naruto to the level of mini me that Gai had managed to get Lee to in weeks. He also wondered if he should be flattered or concerned at the way _all_ the other jounin seemed to be copying his example and running away with small children. Was he a… bad influence.

It appeared that now Gai was also a missing nin, and therefore able to spent time with Kakashi without trying to arrest him, he wanted to reignite their eternal rivalry. Kakashi had always had trouble saying no to Gai. Most people did. Gai could be an unstoppable force of nature when he wanted something. And if there was a part of Kakashi that had secretly missed Gai’s challenges, well no-one ever needed to know, and if anyone did figure it out he was more than competent enough as an assassin to kill them before they could tell anyone.

Within the space of about ten minutes Gai had replaced Kakashi’s peaceful poolside relaxation with a high energy race to see who could complete a thousand laps of the pool first. Gai won. Kakashi pretended he didn’t care while plotting his revenge. They had maybe gotten a little too caught up in their competition, because while they were swimming they’d left the kids largely unsupervised. It was with the benefit of hindsight, probably a mistake.

It turned out Naruto and Lee got on like a house on fire, complete with screaming, and chaos, and large scale property damage. If the resort hadn’t made absolute unflappability, and ability to deal with ninja antics one of their selling points Kakashi suspected they’d all have been banned for life. As it was they’d just been saddled with the repair bill. He looked morosely at the string of zeros. There was no help for it, they’d need to run another job, to pay it off.

…

Sasuke stared, and stared, and then stared some more. He couldn’t help it, he’d never seen anything so awesome in his life. Apart from Itachi of course but that went without saying. _Nothing_ was more awesome than Itachi, whatever that moron Naruto might say.

“Don’t stare Otouto. It’s rude.” Itachi sighed. Sasuke switched his gaze to his brother, his awesome brother, his awesome brother who would totally let him have this if he just looked cute enough.

“I want him. Let me keep him.” He demanded, tugging at Itachi’s sleeve.

“He’s a fellow ninja Sasuke. We can’t just keep him. I’m sure he has lots of other things he needs to be doing.” Itachi tried reason. Sasuke pouted, he hated it when Itachi tried to come over all sensible and responsible, they were internationally wanted mass murdering criminals, even Sasuke knew that sensible and responsible were a lost cause.

“But, he’s a Sharkman Itachi nii-san, he’s _so cool._ And I bet he knows all sorts of cool jutsus and he could help you out on your missions, and he’d be much better than that Kakashi weirdo. _Please_ can we keep him.” He gave Itachi the puppy dog eyes, Itachi was weak to puppy dog eyes. Itachi sighed again before turning to face Kisame, who’d been looking unsure whether to be disturbed or amused by the conversation.

“Kisame right? Look, do you want to travel with us for a while, it’d make my brother really happy and we can probably earn money easier working together.” Kisame considered for a moment before shrugging.

“What the hell. I guess I might as well. Not like I’ve got anything better to do.” The man seemed sincere enough. If he thought he was just humouring them then so much the better, it would make it far easier to gradually assimilate him, if he didn’t realise what Sasuke was doing. If they did it right, he wouldn’t realise until far too late that he was too attached to leave.

…

The job was… well to be honest it was more than a little fishy. A team of archaeologists and scientists had hired them as protection for an expedition to Jungle country. That was al well and good except… universities and museums were respectable institutions with a public image to uphold and funding from the Daimyo. What on earth were they doing hiring missing nin instead of going to one of the official  _licensed_ legal ninja villages? And since when did academics carry _that_ many weapons, fair enough jungle country was dangerous, there was a _reason_ they needed a ninja escort, and sometimes a bit of extra personal protection could go a long way, but some of those professors were carrying nearly as much edged steel as _Genma_ was and he was a fucking professional mercenary. There was definitely something deeply dodgy at work.

Still, professional mercenary meant part of his paycheck was labelled keep your mouth shut and don’t ask awkward questions, and they really weren’t in a position to be fussy. Turned out Konoha, or at least the portion of it in charge of the jounin patrols (i.e. the Nara), weren’t too happy about him and Raidou absconding with the minions, and so rather than the clean getaway that seemingly _everyone_ else had managed including mass murderer Uchiha Itachi, jinchuriki thief Hatake Kakashi, and Maito Gai, voted most visible Jjounin in Konoha five years running. A part of Genma wanted to label that as unfair, but if he was honest, he and Raidou had been _very_ drunk when they grabbed the kids, they may have been less… subtle than they could have been. Besides, if you kidnap the kids of the jounin commander and his best friends you had to expect some kind of reaction just on general principles, even if the parents did secretly think the kids might be better off out of the village.

Anyway it had got to the point where they could hardly take a step without nearly tripping over yet another hunting party. Fire country and its surrounding areas were getting way too hot and a long trip to a country right on the edge of the map seemed like it might just be good for their health. Besides the Yamanaka girl, aka Boss Minion, had heard the best chocolate came from Jungle country and if they backed out now they’d _never_ hear the end of it.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to stock up on extra supplies, just in case. After all, it wasn’t like extra weapons were ever a _bad_ thing, and the minions could probably use some of their own anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gai found Kakashi through his secret Kakashi sense, that tells him where his rival is at all times.  
> Itachi and Kisame were collaborating on a job, then Sasuke saw Kisame and decided he wanted to keep him. Sasuke might have skewed ideas about whether you can just grab another person and keep them because you want them around. That isn't Itachi's fault in the slightest, he can't think of anything he might have done that could have given Sasuke that idea.  
> Oh and meet Kabuto, mad scientist in training. It's very cute, in a "family that conducts grisly human experiments together, stays together" sort of way.


	16. Resistance is futile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi and Gai have a job, Naruto and Lee have an adventure, Kisame may possiby have stockholm syndrome, Asuma has an unexpected responsibility, and Raidou thinks the expedition may not be quite as advertised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place over about a month, starting pretty much where the last one leaves off.

Gai didn’t like stealth missions much, Kakashi wasn’t keen on anything involving extensive public relations work. They compromised with a reasonably straightforward sabotage mission. Some merchant wanted to make an example of one of his competitors, and wasn’t shy about people knowing it. It was a basic attack, demolish, and leave graffiti burned into the ruins job, about as unsubtle as ninja work got, so that kept Gai happy, and requiring very little actual interaction with the clients which kept Kakashi happy.

Honestly they probably could have gotten it done in a week, but well the clients didn’t know that and they were getting paid by the hour. Besides it had been a long time since they’d worked together and neither of them was in a rush to be done. So they lingered over the details, and were creative about their methodology. The results were a fucking _work of art,_ a study in destruction that any high level ninja would appreciate even if their civilian client wouldn’t. Sometimes it just wasn’t about the client. By the end of it Kakashi was sure, working with Gai again was even more fun than the last job he did with Zabuza. They would _definitely_ have to do this again.

Kakashi ni-san and Gai sensei were gone for quite a long time. That was ok because they’d left Naruto with Lee, who was the most awesome friend he’d ever had. He was even better than Haku, who could be a bit highly strung sometimes. He was definitely better than that idiot Sasuke who thought Itachi was better than Naruto’s big brother.

Lee was amazing. He was loud, and friendly, and enthusiastic. When Naruto suggested things to do he always had ways to make them more exciting, and he was always ready to go on an adventure. Naruto was halfway to declaring them Best Friends Forever, which as every six year old knows is a _serious_ commitment. So when Ni-san and Gai sensei had left them alone together Naruto had barely been able to contain his excitement.

They had woken up in their hotel room to a beautiful morning. Lee had suggested they train, Naruto had said it was too nice a day to train in the village, Lee had told him about a film he’d seen where the main character went into the mountains to train and became super awesome because of his new understanding of his place in the universe, and by mid morning they had their bags packed for an expedition.

…

The mountains were wonderful, until about halfway through the afternoon when the snacks ran out and their energy started to flag, and they realised neither of them remembered the way back. Still neither of them was the sort of person who would crumble in the face of such a minor setback and so they forged bravely ahead.

It was sunset by the time they finally came upon evidence of human civilisation. Lee had been nervous, but Naruto was wise in the ways of the world and he knew that being small and adorable meant people would be friendly, and forgiving, and generous, and would most likely be delighted to give them food and somewhere to stay for the night.

He was right. The monks had been both kind and welcoming to them, aside from the odd fact that they didn’t seem to talk. That was ok though because they had _ramen._ Naruto could forgive almost any oddity for the sake of ramen.

…

It had been two weeks and Kisame was coming to the somewhat belated conclusion that all Uchiha were crazy. Really the discussion that had led to his assimilation should have been his first warning. Normal people didn’t talk about stealing S class nin for their own amusement.

As time had gone on it had become increasingly obvious that the brothers were… well batshit crazy was the first description that sprang to mind really. It was the cackling that really did it he reckoned. Plenty of ninja liked destructive jutsus, there was nothing wrong with that, even if setting fire to random buildings in the deserted village that served as their home base/training area/playground did seem a little excessive. But the cackling while they did it, that was something else. Something about it just sent chills down the spine.

And then there was the limpet impression little Uchiha did whenever big Uchiha tried to go on a mission without him. It was cute and kind of funny, at first. Kisame had laughed. And then Chibichiha had done… _something_ with genjutsu, or ninjustu, or some unholy Uzumaki seal matrix, and suddenly there were tentacles, and too many angles, and a wrongness that sucked at Kisame’s eyeballs and made him want to scrape his own brain out with a spoon. It was fucked up. Big Uchiha had just smiled, which was honestly even more fucked up. Kisame had wondered at that point if he should just run away. Although judging by the way Sasuke watched him, and took care to block the obvious exits that might have proven easier said than done.

He could have run, probably, but there was something compelling about their insanity. It was just so incredibly, disturbingly, _bizarre._ The kind of bizarre that stopped being quite real the moment you stopped watching it. He kind of wanted to keep watching, forever. Besides, the kid was cute, and his brother was also cute but in a different way, and neither of them had _ever_ lied to him. It was refreshing, they might be crazy but it was an honest sort of crazy. They didn’t try to be anything else.

So he’d stayed despite himself, and he found himself getting drawn into their insanity little by little. It wasn’t like he’d been exactly stable to begin with, he _was_ a jounin and everyone knew all jounin were crazy, but as the weeks lengthened into months and he still didn’t separate himself from the Uchiha brothers he found that his crazy was starting to align with their crazy in new and exciting ways.

It wasn’t until the day that Sasuke had responded to news of a mission by clinging to him instead of Itachi that he realised just how in over his head he was though. All he could think as he tried to peel Sasuke off his leg before he cut off the circulation to his foot was, “Oh fuck I’ve been adopted.” The worst part was that he didn’t even mind. He was blaming Stockholm syndrome.

…

Lee woke at dawn to find the monks who had sheltered them for the night partaking in some of the most youthful training he’d ever seen. One of them punched a boulder and it fell apart. It was _so cool._ Lee wanted to be that amazing.

So he asked. The monks had looked at him, and then each other, and then conducted a silent conversation using nothing but their eyebrows and some emphatic hand movements. Then one of them had beckoned him to follow and led him into the temple, where he was fitted with a set of robes and brought to sit with the acolytes. Another monk had appeared shortly after with a similarly clad Naruto behind him. And so their instruction in the path of the Silent monks began.

They learned many things over the next few weeks, how to cleanse their minds, and connect to the world around them, and break a man’s neck in six places without even standing up. Learning had involved a lot of running up mountains with pails of water, and meditating quietly in the temple, but that was ok, neither of them was afraid of hard work, and Lee knew from the films he’d seen that seemingly useless tasks were actually a vital part of training meant to teach the student important life lessons.

He was almost sad when Gai sensei and Kakashi san had showed up to get them. He was glad to see Gai sensei again of course, but he would miss the monks.

…

Kakashi didn’t even know why he bothered to be surprised when the kids weren’t where they left them. He was honestly more surprised that the town was still standing. Based on Naruto’s track record a smoking ruin would have been more in line with what was expected.

It had actually taken a while to track them down. Mostly due to the lack of a trail of smoking destruction to follow. Usually when he wanted to find Naruto all he had to do was head for the ominous glow on the horizon. He found the relative peace and quiet unnerving.

It was even more unnerving when he finally managed to track the kids down in a peaceful monastery. Admittedly it was a monastery full of terrifying warrior monks under a vow of silence, but still, it was still standing, in one piece, with no major breakdowns of law and order or the structure of reality in the area. Clearly Lee was a good influence.

They didn’t even have any trouble retrieving the kids from the monks. The monks had been perfectly happy to look after them for a while but seemed honestly relieved that the, admittedly rather loud children, would be leaving their sanctuary to its former state of peace rather than staying indefinitely. They definitely weren’t about to fight to keep them from leaving.

As they left the area peacefully and with the goodwill of the local inhabitants Kakashi ket waiting for the other shoe to drop. It just didn’t feel right, leaving in broad daylight rather than fleeing secretly under cover of darkness.

He was almost relieved a week later when Naruto used his newly learned warrior monk superpowers to accidentally punch a hole in the wall of a bank vault.

…

Asuma had not done a Hatake. He wanted that to be made perfectly clear. He had chosen to leave, perfectly legally, to join the twelve guardian ninja, which was a perfectly legal and well respected profession. He was _not_ a missing nin, and he definitely hadn’t done a Hatake. It was perfectly allowable for a jounin on long distance assignment to take an apprentice with him. He even had permission from his student’s clan head. In fact the clan head had practically begged him to take the boy.

In any case it was all legal and above board and so it totally didn’t count as doing a Hatake. Even if he had left the village with a small child in tow. He let his mind drift back to the day he left.

He’d been packing to leave, when he’d received a rather unexpected visitor. He certainly hadn’t expected Hyuuga Hiashi of all people to appear in his window. And he _really_ hadn’t expected the man to shove an unconscious small child into his arms, and say to take him.

“The elders are being… unreasonable about his treatment.” Hiashi said, “With the village in the state it is I can’t afford discord within the clan, but I _promised_ my brother I’d take care of him. If you take him as an apprentice it’ll get him out of their reach without stirring up trouble none of us can afford.” It had taken a few moment’s for Asuma to process what was happening, so he anwered slowly.

“Are you… asking me to kidnap your nephew?”

“No. Kidnapping implies illegality. It is perfectly legal for you to take Neiji as your apprentice if you have the permission of a parent or guardian. Which you do.” Hiashi replied promptly.

“Doesn’t that sort of thing require… paperwork.” Asuma wondered out loud.

“Here it is. I took the liberty of filling it all in for you, you just have to sign here, here, and here.”

“Don’t I get a say in this?” Asuma was getting the feeling he was being railroaded into something here.

“He won’t be any trouble. He’s a sweet boy, very talented.” Asuma noted how Hiashi didn’t actually answer his question. He didn’t get a say then. Typical. The kid shifted slightly in his arms, but didn’t wake. A thought occurred to him.

“Does _he_ get a say in this?”

“It’s for his own good.” Hiashi replied primly. That was another no then. Why did Asuma even bother. It was obvious he wasn’t getting out of town without the kid. He sighed. It wasn’t like he was actually heartless enough to leave a kid in a bad situation but he had been hoping for a few years free of unwanted responsibility, surely there had been some ninja _actually,_ looking to do a Hatake that could have taken him.

“Fine, whatever. Pass me those papers.”

A week later and they were at the Daimyo’s court. At least the kid was as well behaved, and talented as Hiashi had promised, although he’d initially been less than pleased to wake up to find he’d been handed off to a complete stranger. Still the kid was bright, and it was maybe just a little satisfying to watch the way he picked up on Asuma’s haphazard lessons. He might not have planned to take the kid, but he didn’t really regret it either.

…

Three weeks in the jungle and the clients were getting twitchy. Actually no, that was a lie, they’d been twitchy from the start, but they had been getting worse as time went on. Professor Hinamori was from the looks of things one oversized bug away from an actual heart attack, and Professor Shiba had already thrown six Kunai, badly, in the vague directions of a monkey, a shadow, and an intimidatingly shaped tree. Raidou noticed that he’d spectacularly failed to miss all of them. His last throw had nearly taken Professor Sato’s eye out. Raidou was almost tempted to confiscate the man’s weapons for the safety of the party as a whole, but in the end he decided he just didn’t care enough. Sato had it coming anyway, creepy bastard.

The map was old, and, evidently only minimally accurate, because it took a lot of wandering aimlessly through the rainforest looking for landmarks before they finally came to the ancient temple that was the first stop on their journey.

Professor Kirihara was the first to enter. Presumably because he’d spent the entire trip trying to show off to Professor Hinamori who was too busy hyperventilating to pay much attention. The ninja had settled in for a long and boring stint of guard duty when a trap involving whirring blades, and some kind of clockwork mechanism nearly took their client’s head off. Only Ino’s quick thinking throwing a kunai at the man’s knee saved him, and the situation was enough to bring all the ninja back to a state of alert interest. It seemed their instincts about this expedition had proved right after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Genma, Raidou and the Inoshikacho have just effectively become Indiana Jones. This will be an ongoing theme.  
> Also introducing a number of redshirt oc scientists, who exist solely for plot purposes.  
> Hinamori is the nervous one, Shiba is the paranoid angry one, Kirihara is the macho sporty one, and Sato is the creepy one.  
> More may be added as needed, possibly only a couple of sentences before their gory deaths. But that's the list so far.  
> And yes Sasuke can make himself vaguely resemble an eldritch horror when he wants to. It may or may not be Naruto's fault.


	17. The art of the double cross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto has an idea, Zabuza is a terrible voice of reason, Kisame drags Itachi into something he didn't want to get involved in, Anko and Kiba are both terribly bored, and Raidou finds his employers deeply suspicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been about a week since Kakashi and Gai got Naruto and Lee back from the monks, they've since met up with Zabuza and have been chilling out together.

“Nii san! I had the most awesome idea.” Naruto charged into the room with an air of overwhelming excitement. Zabuza had a bad feeling about this. He wondered idly if it was too late to run, before remembering it had been too late to run ever since that first day he’d met the Copy Nin and his pint sized little brother.

“Oh? What idea is that Naru-chan?” Hatake drawled.

“I was thinking about what you said, about how I couldn’t call my summons on land, and how it would be nice to spend more time with Gai sensei and Zabuza nii without drawing the attention of hunter nin, and how it would be cool to have somewhere more permanent to stay and I had an idea. We should become Ninja Pirates. Like on that TV show we watched last time we were hiding out in a hotel room. It’s a really good idea, cause we could have a ship to live on and we could all be crew together, and we’d be on the sea so I could use my summons, and we could find Treasure. Nii-san, can we be pirates? Please.” Yep, Zabuza called it, yet another disaster in the making. Hatake was looking disturbingly intrigued by the idea, and Hatake’s overenthusiastic friend Gai was already giving a thumbs up and a beaming smile.

Zabuza looked over to the entrance Naruto had burst in though in the vague hope that his agemates might be able to rein him in. No such luck. The Mini Gai seemed almost as enthusiastic about the idea as Naruto himself, and Zabuza could see Haku hanging back in the doorway with his head in his hands, his air of utter resignation a sure sign that he’d already tried and failed to talk Naruto out of it. There would be no help forthcoming from that quarter then.

Why did he have to be the voice of reason? He was the demon of the bloody mist, a notoriously unstable missing nin, who had once slaughtered all of his classmates to prove a point. Why was he all of a sudden the sane man in the room. Bloody Konoha nins. He blamed the magic chakra trees their Shodaime had grown. It couldn’t be healthy, growing up around that much chakra imbued vegetation. Kiri had import restrictions on any plant with its own chakra system, Iwa had a blanket ban on the stuff, Suna used _their_ chakra enhanced plants in esoteric religious rituals, Konoha on the other hand built large quantities of their housing out of the stuff, and then wondered why all their ninja had gone _crazy._

“You know we can’t be pirates without a ship Naruto.” If he was going to be the sane man he might as well make the effort. He doubted it would work though. Haku was much better at being the voice of reason than he was and since he had apparently already failed… well Zabuza doubted his own powers of persuasion on the matter. He was right.

“That’s OK Zabuza nii. We already got a ship. We just need a crew, and I’m sure all of you have cool grown up friends you can call in to be our crew though.” Screw it, being the sane man was a thankless job anyway, and it wasn’t like he had any pressing reasons _not_ to become a pirate. Besides he was from Kiri, deep down inside him there was a little boy who’d always wanted to be a pirate. Anyway they’d need someone on this endeavour who actually knew how to sail.

“I call first mate.” Hatake could be Captain. Zabuza wanted just enough authority to order people around without having to be responsible for everything.

…

Itachi wondered vaguely if he should have _burned_ the letter before Kisame could read it. Burning things was usually an effective solution after all. But he hadn’t, and Kisame had read it, and now the damage was done. He still set the letter on fire of course, just on basic principles.

 _Dear Itachi-chan_ the letter had said.

 _Me and a few friends have recently got together to set up a high risk trading initiative_ (That was code for either piracy or banditry), _on the high seas,_ (Piracy then). _If you are interested in a life of excitement, adventure, and exploration_ (Itachi mentally translated to extreme violence and large quantities of alcohol), _then we would be honoured to invite you to join our crew._ (Translation, come and be a ninja pirate, it’ll be fun, honest.)

_Please reply as soon as possible. Your favourite senpai, Kakashi._

Itachi didn’t like boats. They made him seasick, as well as being unfortunately flammable. If it had been up to him the letter would have burned and that would have been an end of it. Unfortunately Sasuke’s adopted missing nin from Kiri had got to the letter first, and had seized on the opportunity to fulfil his childhood dream. Apparently all kids in Kiri wanted to grow up to be either pirates or smugglers, preferably both.

It was yet more evidence that all mist nin were crazy, as if the title “the bloody mist” hadn’t been warning enough. Itachi blamed the water, it couldn’t be healthy for kids, to grow up drinking water full of chakra enhanced bacteria. Konoha _filtered_ the chakra bacteria out of the water system like _normal_ people and fed them to the Hashirama trees, Ame subsisted primarily off of neutralising teas and alcohol, Suna only drank it at special mystical events, Kiri on the other hand gulped the stuff down as though there was nothing wrong with it. And as a result they were all _insane._

And now as a result of that insanity Itachi was being shanghaied by new best friend into becoming a pirate, and the worst part was it seemed to be _contagious._ Kisame had somehow gotten to Sasuke, and now Sasuke was declaring his love of all things sea and ship related. Sasuke apparently thought pirates were _very cool._ If Itachi was honest he lost the argument as soon as Sasuke made that declaration.

Oh well, it would be nice to work with Kakashi again at least.

…

Anko was bored. So very bored. Kurenai was on a mission, Hayate was in the hospital, Genma, Raidou, and Gai had all independently done Hatakes, Asuma had sort of done a Hatake, the jounin lounge was mostly deserted. There was no juicy new gossip to spread, no stubborn prisoners to interrogate, and absolutely nothing on tv. Basically there was nothing to do and no-one to torment. She could torment Iruka sensei she supposed, but she remembered what Iruka had been like in the academy even if everyone else had forgotten, and she did _not_ want to make herself his prank target.

Hmm speaking of pranks though, it _had_ been a while since anyone had properly pranked the Anbu barracks. They might be getting complacent. It was practically her civic duty to keep them on their toes. Besides, her other options involved lurking around the academy and trying to decide which kid she’d most like to steal if she ever _were_ to do a Hatake (purely a theoretical exercise of course, like a game of seduce, recruit, assassinate), and that was the sort of thing that could get you dragged in by Danzo’s not so secret police. Not to mention that was probably where most of the other jounin were already, and Anko had never been one to follow the crowd.

…

Kiba was bored. Horribly, mind numbingly bored, and it was all the fault of those stupid jounin. They must have stolen all the interesting kids his age because by now his class consisted solely of civilian born kids, and Aburame Shino who never said anything. None of them were _bad,_ but seriously there was no-one _fun_ to spend time with. He’d have liked to have a fellow prankster to make trouble with, or even just someone to cut class with him like Shikamaru and Chouji used to. It wasn’t fair. Especially since you’d have to be _crazy_ to steal an Inuzuka cub. Inuzuka could _always_ track their offspring down. At this rate he’d be the only kid in class that didn’t get stolen by a jounin to go off on exciting adventures.

Anyway he was bored, and it was the jounin’s fault, and he might not have a partner in crime but he was definitely a competent enough prankster to get some… creative revenge. He’d managed to figure out where the Anbu barracks were, and he had some… supplies he’d been saving for a special occasion. Jounin beware.

…

Anko ran, too out of breath to even be impressed at the way the brat was keeping up with her. Things hadn’t gone according to plan, and seriously if one little Anbu chase was enough to have her out of breath she must seriously be out of shape.

It was of course the brat’s fault. Not that there had been anything actually _wrong_ with his plan. Actually it was a pretty solid piece of prank work, especially for a brat that couldn’t be more than seven, and was probably less. It had just… interacted badly with her own prank. It was like those clusterfuck missions you heard about when someone undercover on one classified mission managed to totally blow the cover of someone from a different branch of the service on a different undercover mission. Anyway upshot was she and the brat, an Inuzuka judging by his clan marks, were now running for their lives from a pack of angry Anbu.

They were halfway into the forest of death before she remembered that she probably shouldn’t take an academy student in there. Ah well, he was with her, he’d be fine. She led him to a clearing before collapsing in exhaustion.

“Don’t worry, they won’t follow us in here.” She reassured the brat.

“Where is here?” He asked. The crinkled up look of curiosity was actually kinda cute.

“This.” She paused for dramatic effect, “This is… the Forest of Death.” She gave him one of her most manic smiles. She wasn’t expecting him to smile back.

“Cool.” Was his response. “You know Nee chan, you’re actually pretty cool for an old lady. Even if you did ruin my totally awesome prank.”

“Hey, who are you calling old lady. And it was _you_ who ruined _my_ prank.” Anko growled. The brat didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. Probably Hatake’s fault, ever since that had become a thing small children had totally ceased to be intimidated by high level ninja.

“No it was totally your fault. Everything was going fine until you showed up.” Anko was not going to descend into an argument with a brat like him. She was _far_ more mature than that.

“We’ll just chalk it up to communication errors.” She said instead. “Just imagine the chaos we could cause if we joined forces.” The smile on the brat’s face was like looking in a mirror. Anko suddenly knew _exactly_ which kid she’d take if she did a runner.

…

Thus far the temple had yielded six gold statues, five scrolls in mysterious and unreadable languages, twelve distinct death traps involving moving walls, spinning blades, and pits with spikes in, and an entire room stuffed with creepy wooden dolls. Professor Sato had been disturbingly pleased by that last one, creepy fucker. Raidou felt more than a little put upon. They’d signed up for a basic bodyguard mission, not a… whatever the hell this was, and their clients just kept getting more suspicious by the moment.

You knew it was bad when Professor Sato was one of the _less_ suspicious individuals in the party. Professor Hinamori was _way_ too nervous for the experienced archaeologist she claimed to be, Professor Kirihara had _something_ in his bag that he wouldn't let _anyone_ look at, Professor Katsura, supposedly the leader of the expedition got evasive whenever any of them tried to corner him on what, exactly the expedition was searching for, and Professor Shiba kept on sneaking off to talk to someone on a radio, it was kind of cute how he thought they hadn’t noticed. And then there were the grad students who were all suspicious purely on the grounds that they weren’t complaining yet, the expedition was miserable, apparently lethal, and they weren’t getting paid, if they weren’t complaining they pretty much _had_ to be up to something. The only people on this mission that _weren’t_ suspicious, were him, Genma, and the kids, which, considering they were professional liars thieves and assassins, currently on the run from their own government for three high profile kidnappings, was pretty bad.

Raidou’s musings were interrupted when a boulder started rolling slowly down the narrow corridor they were walking through. Spikes appeared from the walls a minute later, and Radou wondered idly what kind of madman actually designed this building before Shikamaru froze it with a shadow. He was about to disintegrate it with a low level douton jutsu but one of the grad students apparently ran out of patience and got there first with a decent amateur usage of mining explosives. Why he had them Raidou didn’t know. But then he also wasn’t being paid to care about the grad students’ pyromaniac hobbies so he just shrugged, gave Genma a _look_ and carried on.

The next room was a puzzle room, there was a riddle, a bunch of oddly shaped blocks, and a piranha pit in case you got things wrong. Of course. Raido was getting very bored of those. He called Shikamaru forward to solve the riddle. Yes he, or any of the professors could probably have solved it, but Raidou was bored and Shikamaru was fastest. Ten minutes later and the door opened on the final treasure chamber. That was, predictably, when it all went to hell. Couldn’t these people wait until they were safely outside to double cross each other? Seriously, no professionalism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you can all guess who Anko is going to steal.  
> And yes the redshirt professors are all up to something, some of them are up to more than others, some of them may in fact be familiar faces in disguise. See if you can guess which ones and who they are.  
> You'll notice that people who may have previously seemed comparatively reasonable just took a jump off the deep end. That's because in this fic there is no sane man. Just people that seem saner than onthers in specific contexts. So when it comes to setting random shit on fire Itachi is the crazy one, and Kisame is the voice of reason, when it comes time to set of for a life of piracy on the high seas Itachi is more sensible, and Kisame gets carried away.  
> This begins the ninja pirate arc, which has been in the works since about chapter ten, and should span at least seven chapters. There will be rum, and hidden treasure, and terrifying monsters from the deep, most of which are summoned by Naruto.


	18. Promising career moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sakura has a new life ambition and she knows just how to make it come true, Yashamaru needs somewhere to lay low and possibly earn enough money to pay off his nephew's dry cleaning tab, Orochimaru ha become Maes Hughes' much creepier cousin, and Genma is definately not getting paid enough not to kill these fucking civilians.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going with Gaara being about a year older than Naruto. It's been a bit under a year since Yashamaru stole him. They've gone through a lot of hotel room cleaning bills since then.

Things just hadn’t been the same since Ino left. Sakura knew it wasn’t entirely Ino’s fault. If a jounin decided to do a Hatake with you there wasn’t much to be done about it except to sit back and enjoy the ride. But still Sakura missed her. It just wasn’t fair, Ino was off exploring the continent having adventures, while Sakura was stuck in the village with no-one to play with, and nothing to do except watch telly.

On the other hand if Ino hadn’t left Sakura would never have discovered her life’s true purpose so she supposed there was always a silver lining. Because in the many hours she’d spent watching the tv since her friend abandoned the village she’d discovered _spy movies._ It had taken approximately a ten minutes for her to be hooked. The gadgets, the evil plots, the glamorous costumes, the daring escapes, it was all _so cool_. By the time the first show had ended she _knew_ she wanted to be a secret agent when she grew up.

And now she had a way to make it happen.

At first she’d thought the man spying on the hotsprings was just a pervert. But then she spotted his headband, and the fact that he was carefully taking notes and she realised. He wasn’t just some random pervert. He was a _spy._ It was the _perfect_ opportunity. She _refused_ to let it lslip through her fingers. She would _make_ him steal her away to be his apprentice in the secret spymaster arts.

Her first approach was, well ok she could see why he might have turned her down. She hadn’t exactly been subtle, and what spy would want to teach someone who couldn’t be subtle. She’d just barged in to his super-secret surveillance and demanded that he teach her to be a master spy like himself. Then the Kunoichi in the bath he’d been observing overheard her and they’d both had to run for it. After that the old man had just said “No”, and walked off.

It was… embarrassing but she refused to be deterred. So she’d made a bad first impression. That was fine. She could fix it. She just had to find some way to prove herself. Maybe if she showed she could tail the old man himself wherever he went that would demonstrate her talent and dedication. Yes, she liked that plan. Now, to find out her future teacher’s name.

…

It was the third body this week, and Yashamaru was getting more than a little tired of trying to scrub blood and other, physical remnants, out from between the floorboards. Gaara really was trying, but it was proving harder than expected to rein in his sand’s natural defence system, and the assassins just _kept showing up._ Did Rasa seriously have nothing better for his jounin to do than try and hunt down a seven year old kid. Especially since they kept _losing_ to said seven year old. Maybe it was a pride thing. It certainly couldn’t be cost effective. The cost in equipment alone must be staggering.

Anyway whatever Rasa’s reasons were, the upshot was he and Gaara had a problem. At this rate they’d be permanently banned from every inn this side of moon country thanks to the unfortunate mess they kept leaving behind them. Because Gaara kept turning assassins into jam and no matter how hard Yashamaru scrubbed, he could never quite get all the blood out of the cracks of the floorboards. Innkeepers got a bit funny about that. Something had to change or they’d be camping for the foreseeable future. Yashamaru _hated_ camping.

He thought about the rumour he’d heard in the last shady bar he’d checked for work. Someone was trying to put together a pirate crew. He’d dismissed it at the time as not worth trying for. He had no sailing experience, and Gaara in close quarters with a whole group of strangers just sounded like a recipe for disaster. But lately Gaara _had_ been getting better about not lashing out at random bystanders. It had been _weeks_ since he’d killed anyone that wasn’t an assassin, and maybe, just maybe, training in close proximity with a large quantity of water would make it easier to get Gaara’s talents under control.

At any rate, it might at least allow them to shake off the assassins for a while, and shipboard accomodations might not be roomy but they were better than sleeping in a tent, which was the other option until the collective memories of the innkeepers in the area had faded a bit. Besides he’d heard there were other kids on the ship, other _ninja_ kids. It might be good for Gaara to have some friends his own age, as long as he managed to refrain from crushing them.

The first mate, it turned out was Momochi Zabuza. Which on the one hand was a good thing, the man was a master of water jutsus, if he couldn’t run damage control on Gaara’s powers then who could, and being from Kiri he was presumably at least a competent sailor. But on the other hand. If the demon of the bloody mist was the first mate, who the hell was the Captain, and why did he have the sinking feeling he’d signed up for more insanity than he was prepared to deal with?

Of course. It turned out the Captain was Hatake bloody Kakashi. The same insane leaf idiot that started this whole thing by just up and running off with what was rumoured to be his village’s jinchuuriki without a hint of a warning. Then again if Hatake was an idiot what did that say about the fools that followed his example? Like for example Yashamaru who was currently holding the hand of his adorable little homicidal jinchuuriki nephew and praying he didn’t kill any bystanders while everyone was watching.

Yeah he was probably just as insane as Hatake, Yashamaru looked over at Gaara, remembered assassins, and scrubbing the blood out of the floor of far too many inns. But he also remembered his nephew’s smile as they walked through a crowded city and nobody flinched away from Gaara because none of them knew his name. Maybe he was a fool, but that didn’t mean he’d made the wrong choice.

Maybe Hatake was insane to start what he did, but that didn’t make him wrong. He’d done pretty much the same thing as Yashamaru, and he saw how Hatake looked at little Naruto, it was not so different from the way Yashamaru looked at Gaara. He saw the love there, and he thought that there was something in the man that it might be worth trying to follow.

He signed the contract. It wasn’t like a standard share of any loot acquired was a _bad_ deal, and Gaara was so excited to make friends with kids his own age. He could deal with insanity. It wasn’t like any ninja worth the name were actually _sane,_ even if Suna was the only village sensible enough to recognise that fact and channel it all into cathartic communal rituals designed to lend a level of _consistency_ to the madness by discreet application of controlled chakra infused mind altering substances. The first Kazekage had famously said, “if everyone’s going to go cuckoo under the influence of whatever chakra infused crap builds up in the area, we might as well make a proper mystical ceremony out of it and pass the insanity off as spiritual awareness.” The first Kazekage had been a little unconventional.

He could deal with insanity he told himself. Although the look of exhausted resignation that passed across Momochi’s face when Gaara was dragged away by the kyuubi jinchuriki and his little pack of friends to do… something it wasn’t clear what, was fairly ominous. When he asked where they were going Momochi had just passed him a bottle of rum accompanied by dark mutterings about things man was not meant to know. He wondered if he’d be better off not asking.

…

Genma was about seventy per cent sure he wasn’t getting paid enough for this shit. He was about fifty per cent sure there wasn’t enough money in the world to pay for this shit. Fucking crocodile pits, fucking scientists, fucking secret hidden agendas. He was a ninja, an assassin, he was a fucking expert at underhanded dealings and stabbing people in the backs. Clearly the hidden villages had nothing on professional academia.

It had started when Professor Shiba had pulled a gun out of nowhere, made a call on the radio to bring in a small squad of heavily armed non-ninja mercenaries wearing a great deal of leather clothing. He was, he explained, suffering from some cash flow issues, and so he was going to kill them all, leave their bodies to rot in the jungle, and sell off the loot on the black market in order to pay off his debts. Genma disapproved of that plan. Especially the bit where he and his team became collateral damage.

It was fine though. He and Raidou were Anbu level, they could deal with a bunch of jumped up mercenaries. They were about to do so. Then one of them tried to take Professor Kirihara’s bag and he went completely ape shit. It was disturbing to watch. Genma had been a ninja for a long time and he’d seen some fucked up shit, but that, that was up there. Kirihara’s eyes had gone totally black with white pupils, his face had contorted into something barely human, and then he’d done his level best to bite through the mercenary’s throat. He got about a third of the way through before the others managed to drag him off, mouth foaming pink, spitting something vicious in a language that burned all their ears. He didn’t calm down until they gave his bag back.

Everyone had been too busy staring in horrified fascination to take advantage of the mercenary’s distraction, but that was ok, because clearly the weird shit wasn’t going to stop with Kirihara. Nope, because that was when high strung Hinamori turned out to have an explosive chakra seal tattooed onto her chest in order to destroy the temple and everyone in it for the sake of the world.

Then things had got very confused very quickly. Kirihara had flipped out again and made a solid attempt at trying to attack her, while Katsura babbled something panicked about ancient seal matrixes, and poor interactions and elder gods, and that the bomb would only make things worse. As far as Genma could work out Hinamori didn’t trust a word he said, and believed he was working for… well whoever it was that had made her angry enough to turn herself into a human bomb.

Genma paused to look around at the rest of the archaeologists. It was utter chaos. Kirihara was still ranting and frothing at the mouth, Shiba was looking increasingly nervous and on the verge of wetting himself, obviously realising too late that he was in over his head. About half of the grad students looked confused and or hungover. A couple were trying to help Katsura talk Hinamori down, a couple more were trying to take advantage of the chaos to make their escape. There was one which he was pretty sure was about to try and help Kirihara get loose.

And then there was Sato and the grad student that had been using the explosives. They weren’t panicked _at all,_ in fact they were giving the rest of the researchers the same assessing looks Genma was. He was starting to suspect those two might be ninja.

Then they hit some kind of preset time limit on how long they could stay still in one place, and all of them fell in the crocodile pit.

Genma definitely wasn’t getting paid enough for this.

...

The prisoner whimpered in helpless panic as Orochimaru reactivated the device.

“No, please, no more. Just kill me, please.” Orochimaru just smiled benignly.

“No no I insist. It’s really no trouble. There’s plenty of time to kill you later. I’m not a cruel man, I can take the time to give you one last good memory. “ The prisoner just sobbed in despair, and Orochimaru pulled up yet another holiday photo on the slide projector.

“And this is me and Kabuto on our field trip to snow country. We dissected an entire polar bear under field conditions. It’s a shame we couldn’t bring the entire corpse back for study, but we were travelling light. At least we managed to take some samples, and it was good practice for Kabuto in conducting experiments under non-optimal conditions. See here’s a picture of the liver, note it’s unusual properties. Kabuto spotted that all by himself. He’s got such a bright future ahead of him.”

The prisoners screams echoed through the base. Kabuto sighed. It looked like Dad was getting carried away again. It was a little distracting when he was trying to write up research notes, but he didn’t mind. It showed that he cared. Kabuto had never realised how good it would feel, to have a parent that loved him, and supported his interests, and was _proud_ of his achievements. So proud that he’d even put off dissecting his prisoners in order to show them pictures of the two of them having family bonding experiences. It left a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest to know that he was so loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yep, Jiraiya ends up with Sakura. Although who's doing the stealing and who's along for the rise is up for debate. Sakura believes in being proactive. Also this is what happens if you let your bored and lonely kids watch too much telly.  
> I've decided Yashamaru is one of my favourites. With his adorable murder child in tow. He's definately not the sane man, but he's insane in a more stable and consistent way than a lot of the others.  
> For Orochimaru's picture viewing room picture the stereotypical brainwashing set up with the bright lights, the chair with restraints, the eyeballs taped open, and a continuous stream of Orochimaru, and Kabuto's family holiday snaps on a massive overhead projector.  
> Genma and Raidou's redshirt scientists have started to show their true colours, all will be revealed next chapter.


	19. And a bottle of rum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsunade is given a job offer she can't refuse, Shizune finally meets her penpal, Anko has nothing better to do than hang out with a kid and cause trouble, Genma and Raidou find out the stakes have been raised, and Jiraiya is manipulated by a seven year old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naruto's generation is currently around six or seven depending on birthdays

In light of recent events hanging out with an academy student probably wasn’t the least suspicious thing that she, as a jounin could be doing. Especially since she might still be under suspicion for involvement in the debacle with Genma, and Raidou, and a whole set of mini InoShikaCho kids. The fallout from that one had _not_ been pretty. That was about the point when Shikaku had ceased to find the whole situation funny, and had started to get annoyed. Personally she suspected he was mostly annoyed that Genma and Raidou had managed to run off with Shikamaru before he could manage it, but you didn’t say shit like that to the jounin commander. Not if you didn’t want to be permanently stuck on B rank escort missions for spoiled nobles.

In any case, hanging out with Kiba, probably a bit suspicious, and considering who his family were, probably ill advised. But what the hell, she did love living dangerously, and with most of her drinking buddies now out of the village, she was _bored._ She certainly wasn’t going to _stop,_ the kid had talent, and a really inspiring sort of enthusiasm, and she’d always wanted a little minion of her very own.

…

“We need a ship’s medic.” Itachi had said flatly after the third near miss. Knife throwing, it turned out, was _not_ a skill easily taught in the close confines of shipboard life, but the kids were organised enough that any attempt to stop the lessons would probably result in a minor mutiny, which Naruto would take as an excuse to summon the monsters of the deep. Nobody wanted that. Itachi’s suggestion of an on board medic to deal with such little incidents, along with any injuries from their actual pirate activities, did hold some merit.

But where would they find a medic crazy or desperate enough to sign up with a pirate crew made up entirely of insane ninjas and their overpowered spawn. Zabuza pointed out as much, along with the fact that it would be best if the medic was at least marginally competent. Hatake had looked thoughtful for a moment, then calculating, then deranged. It was a fairly disturbing transition to watch.

“I say we continue as we begun. Kidnapping necessary staff is a fine old maritime tradition.”

“You’re saying we should shanghai someone?” Kisame sounded reluctantly impressed, with a slight edge of glee. All his childhood dreams were coming true.

“Yep.” There was a manic edge to Hatake’s voice that Zabuza had long since learnt to decode as a warning sign. He had strong suspicions it might have been there right before Hatake abandoned his village and started this whole mess. Itachi waved a hand casually in the air.

“I feel like I should stop you there and ask how exactly you shanghai someone.” He said in the weary tone of someone who knew he was the only person in the room not in possession of all the facts. Kisame smiled a wide sharks grin and launched into an excited explaination.

“Well _traditionally,_ the captain and his loyal supporters would go around the local sailors bars at around half past fuck in the morning, and drag anyone too drunk or hungover to escape back to their ship. By the time they sober up, you’re safely out to sea and they have to work for you or drown. Of course if you’re looking for a specific skillset it is perfectly acceptable to, well help nature along a bit by buying your target extra drinks.”

“So where _do_ we find a competent medic careless enough to get blackout drunk in some dodgy sailors pub.” Itachi wondered aloud. There was a brief pause as they all came up with exactly the same answer.

“Tsunade.” Itachi sighed mournfully.

“Tsunade” Hatake confirmed with a grin of vicious satisfaction.

…

Tsunade woke feeling sick. Horribly, horribly sick. What _had_ she been drinking last night. She couldn’t really remember. I fact she couldn’t really remember much about last night. She used a quick application of healing jutsu to keep from losing her dignity by throwing up all over herself. As the jutsu took effect she started to realise the queasy up and down motion wasn’t just her stomach’s reaction to dubious alcohol. She opened her eyes. Yep, definitely on a boat. What the hell.

Then the Hatake brat appeared in her field of vision with a truly obnoxious smile on his face, and everything started to make sense.

“Congratulations Tsunade hime. You are now the official ship’s medic of the bad ship Calamity. Welcome to your new life of adventure and piracy on the high seas.”

If she hadn’t been so hung over that punch would have connected and wiped that smile off his face once and for all. They’d _better_ have brought Shizune along, she was carrying their entire stock of hangover cures.

…

When Shizune had imagined how she’d meet Haku for the first time, this, really wasn’t how she’d pictured it happening. Maybe she should have. After all she’d learned long ago that anything involving Naruto would always follow the most absurd path imaginable, and Naruto had been the one who introduced the two of them in the first place. Of course their first meeting had turned out as utterly ridiculous as all the other Naruto related incidents they’d suffered through over the years.

She had considered trying to stop the depressingly unsubtle group of highly dangerous missing nin when they picked up her passed out drunk Shishou and carried her off to their ship, but honestly, it just didn’t seem worth it. Shishou would probably end up in some kind of trouble either way, she might as well spare herself the bruises. Besides, she was curious.

So instead she’d followed them on board, realised just who was running the ship and resisted the urge to methodically bash her brains out against the side of the ship. Of _course_ Naruto was running a pirate ship, by Naruto standards it was almost a reasonable course of action. She should have seen this coming from the moment she saw her Shishou dangling upside down from a sharkman’s shoulders. This situation had Naruto written _all_ over it.

It got worse of course. Naruto wasn’t the only miniature menace on board. Uchiha Sasuke was there too, as well as a very green kid who introduced himself as the most youthful Lee. The only thing missing was the creepy squad. Oh kami she hoped the creepy squad didn’t show up. Haku agreed with her on that. He really was the _best_ sympathetic ear.

Actually, meeting Haku in person kind of made it all worth it. Haku was every bit as sensible, and reasonable as his letters had suggested. He was smart, and competent, and knew a hundred different ways to paralyse someone using only senbon. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a friend.

Also, he had a solid plan to keep the miniature menaces away from the rum supplies, which showed the kind of forward thinking that would probably save the world one day. It was nice not to be the only sane man in the room.

…

Raidou wasn’t sure if he should be glad they’d managed to lose most of their clients in the chaos of escaping the crocodile pit, or deeply concerned about what they might be up to unsupervised. They should probably try and retrieve them, it was unprofessional to just leave your clients to die in a booby trapped ancient temple to powers man was not meant to know, even if they were raving nutjobs.

The crocodile pit had been slightly embarrassing actually. He and Genma really should have seen that trap coming. His only defence was that he was distracted by the utter chaos of all their clients simultaneously double crossing each other in the middle of the treasure room. Still at least the kids had enjoyed it. Ino had a new crocodile skin handbag, and shoes, and belt, and coat. He should probably give her a talk about moderation and good taste at some point because currently she looked like the spoilt wife of a small time crimelord, it wasn’t exactly classy. Chouji had managed to whip up a pretty decent crocodile stew from her leftovers, which was going a long way towards making Raidou feel better about the situation. At first glance it didn’t seem like Shikamaru had bothered to take any souvenirs, that is until you looked closer and noticed his shiny new crocodile tooth necklace. When Raidou asked he just sighed and muttered something about it being Ino’s idea, and it being more troublesome to argue.

There was a low and repetitive whimpering coming from the only civilian they’d managed to keep track of. Luckily it was the most important one, aka the one that was paying their wages. Professor Katsura hadn’t taken the sudden appearance of hungry crocodiles in his travel itinerary very well. Which was fair enough, he was a civilian, crocodiles were a perfaectly reasonable thing for him to be scared of. It was actually quite impressive how quickly he managed to pull himself together when Genma suggested cutting their losses and leaving.

“No.” He shouted in a panic, the sort of panic that left Raidou at least curious to know what could be terrifying enough to break through the man’s emotional crisis over the crocodile pit. “No we can’t leave. We _must_ find the left Eye of Darkness before the others do. If we don’t, the world itself may be doomed.”

Raidou was sceptical. Katsura must have seen it in his face because he continued desperately. “You have to believe me. You saw what happened to Kirihara, he must be in possession of the right Eye, it has already woven its evil influence over him, and now it seeks to unite with its other half and bring a thousand thousand years of darkness upon our world.” Ok what had happened to Kirihara was pretty freaky, but still, there probably _were_ other reasons for that kind of thing. Genma looked at him, on the other hand it was unprofessional to just abandon a mission, and if the man _was_ right it would be pretty bad if the whole world ended because they couldn’t be bothered. Raidou sighed.

“Fine, we’ll find the bloody Eye of Darkness.” The look of utter gratitude on Kirihara’s face was actually quite heartwarming. Maybe he’d even pay them extra when all this was done.

…

Sakura _needed_ to prove herself to Jiraya sensei. Her dream of being a superspy hung in the balance. It would have to be impressive though, to win his approval after her terrible first impression. She would just have to show him that she could spy on someone, just like in the movies. She gathered her gadgets, and her basic ninja supplies, and set out in search of a target. It would have tp be someone powerful, and paranoid, someone with resources, and skills, and minions, someone with… a fluffy white cat.

…

Jiraiya shouldn’t have got up out of bed this morning. He’d woken up with a bad feeling, he hadn’t listened, and now he was paying the price. He should have paid attention to his gut, it had never led him wrong yet.

It was the pink haired kid from last week. It turned out she’d taken his refusal to train her as a challenge, which, did happen, some people reacted to rejection like that. Most people didn’t respond to the perceived challenge by spying on bloody creepy councilman Danzo. Most people had more self preservation than that. Not this one, he wasn’t sure _where_ she’d gotten the idea that ownership of a fluffy white cat was evidence of sinister plans but spying on Danzo clearly hadn’t done anything to dissuade her of the idea.

Actually that was one of the worst things, not only had she _tried_ to spy on Danzo, she’d _succeeded,_ and then come back to him with the evidence. Of course Danzo almost certainly knew about it but still, Jiraiya was impressed. She was after all, still in the academy, and she’d managed to spy on a kage level ninja. And now of course he either had to give in, and take her as his student, or leave her to Danzo’s tender mercies. He was tempted, she had after all brought it on herself, but in the end he really wasn’t quite that heartless. Besides, it wasn’t like he didn’t _like_ teaching, it might be good to have a young mind to mould along the road. Maybe she could make friends with Tsunade’s apprentice. Of course he’d have to take her quietly, he didn’t think Danzo would just let him _leave_ with such a promising recruit. He’d sneak her out of the village and then it would be fine, once they were on the road they’d be more trouble than they were worth to track down.

Fuck, he’d just been manipulated into doing a Hatake by a seven year old. That was embarrassing. Not embarrassing enough to leave her to Danzo unfortunately but still, he was _never_ admitting to Tsunade how he ended up with the kid.

…

Tenzo sat in the bar and listened to rumours, and tried not to panic about the trouble Sai might be getting Shin into back at their hotel room. Those kids really needed some practical socialisation in a controlled environment.

Then he heard it. Some guy was rambling on about piracy and falling standard when he let slip that Taicho was Captaining a pirate ship. After a quick interrogation which involved buying the man a drink and then staring at him until he spilled the beans, Tenzo had a name, “The Calamity”, and the estimated next port of call. He grinned in anticipation, if he was lucky, this might be _exactly_ what he needed. A safe place for his kids to socialise with others their age, a paid job with actual money, or at least loot, and last but not least adult company. He loved his adorable little kids, really he did, but the prospect of a real conversation with someone his own age was intoxicating. He called out as he got back to their room.

“Shin, Sai, pack up. We’re going to sea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shizune and Haku totally drown their sorrows over elaborate tea ceremonies. They aren't quite old enough for the whole boyfriend and girlfriend thing but they're definitely headed that way just out of sheer solidarity.  
> Yes Sakura thinks Danzo is a bond villain. She's not entirely wrong. Jiraiya ended up taking her to keep her safe from Danzo, she thinks it's because her awesome spy skills impressed him. Which they did, but not as much as the thought of a seven year old spying on Danzo and his cult of child soldier's horrifies him.


	20. Doomsday scenarios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the nindiana jones team come to the conclusion of their first adventure, Tenzo and his mini assassins sign up with the bad ship Calamity, and Anko and Kiba get in over their heads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. I know it's been ages. But this fic completely disappeared from my profile for a while and I had to figure out how to get it back, and then I was lacking in the cracky inspiration this fic requires. But here we are. It's back. Hopefully won't be nearly so long for the next update.

Ok so the next time an expert in ancient civilisations told Raidou there was a mysterious and world destroying artefact hidden in an ancient temple, he would definitely take them more seriously. It turned out Katsura was right. The Left Eye of Darkness _was_ a device of terrible and unimaginable power capable of ending life as they knew it.

He really hadn’t known that objects were capable of emitting that level of killing intent, well aside from those creepy swords the Kirin nin had. Turned out you learned something new every day, because being in a room with that thing was like facing off against Orochimaru in a bad mood. And that was without even factoring in the dark and horrifying whispers that were being emitted from the shadows of the room, or the smell of blood that was rising from the cracks between the paving stones.

On the plus side they’d managed to locate a fair number of their missing civilians. On the more negative side, it turned out not all of their missing civilians were actual civilians. Raidou really wished he could be surprised, but honestly, they hadn’t exactly been subtle. Bloody Akatsuki, the dramatic reveal with ominous outfit change was definitely their style. Overdramatic, attention grabbing, and in astonishingly poor taste. It pretty much summed up their organisation as a whole.

So creepy Professor Sato was actually the equally creepy, but infinitely more dangerous Sasori of the Red Sands, and that grad student with the suspicious talent for explosives was in fact Akatsuki’s newest recruit, some Iwa kid named Deidara. Under any other circumstances Raidou would have been extremely alarmed by their appearance. It was actually quite depressing that the S ranked missing nin amongst them were not the most immediate threat. That would be the apparently possessed Professor Kirihara, who had somehow survived the crocodile pit without being eaten. Possibly by trying to eat the crocodiles back, judging by the blood on his face, and the wild staring look in his eyes.

Anyway it turned out Kirihara was planning to unite the eyes of darkness to summon his dread god from the abyss, and by the time everyone else had got there he was already halfway through the ritual. To make matters more complicated it seemed that Hinamori had activated her suicide seal, and with her unconscious, no-one had any idea how to deactivate it. At least Shiba and his mercenaries hadn’t made it out of the crocodile pit, but the surviving grad students looked about ready to riot, and honestly Raidou didn’t blame them. They almost certainly hadn’t signed up for this. _Raidou_ hadn’t signed up for this, and he was a ninja, he dealt with fucked up shit for a living.

Raidou sneaked a look at the Akatsuki. Nope, no help there. They didn’t seem too eager to try and _stop_ Kirihara. In fact, judging by the suspiciously complex looking storage seal Sasori was sketching out on that scroll, it looked like the Akatsuki planned to let the elder God be summoned and then seal it into a scroll for purposes unknown. Raidou had a very bad feeling about that plan. Clearly Professor Katsura agreed, because he’d started babbling something about how they had to stop them before it was too late.

It was a good thing Raidou and Genma were so good at working together. One look and they both knew what to do. They set the kids on Hinamori, threw a squawking Katsura in the vague direction or Kirihara, and launched a combined attack on their rival ninja.

After that things got very chaotic. The kids somehow managed to deactivate Hinamori’s seal, Raidou suspected there had been some use of Ino’s family jutsus involved, he and Genma managed to disrupt whatever it was the Akatsuki were trying to do, by careful application of serious amounts of violence, and Kirihara was distracted enough by Katsura’s flailing attempts to stop him that he mispronounced one of the words in the deeply ominous summoning chant he’d been delivering.

The way the good professor’s expression just screamed “Oh shit”, as he realised he’d messed up the summoning, was fairly gratifying. Then reality tore itself apart in a very localised way, manifesting in something sort of like tentacles but with more angles, that seized hold of Kirihara, the eyes of darkness, and a couple of the nearest grad students and dragged them screaming into a rift in the world that sucked unpleasantly at Raidou’s eyeballs. Then it closed again, much to the relief of everyone in the building. Raidou and Genma would have continued their fight with the Akatsuki at that point, if it hadn’t been for the ominous crack.

Everyone froze while they registered the fact that the temple was collapsing on them, and then there was chaos as everyone tried to make their escape.

Standing outside, Raidou stared at the rubble that had once been an ancient deathtrap and wondered if the Akatsuki had been crushed. Probably not. They didn’t have that kind of luck. Still, at least Chouji had the presence of mind to grab their client during the mad dash for the exit, so they _should_ still get paid at least. Hinamori and some of the grad students had also made it. All in all it wasn’t the _worst_ mission disaster Raidou had ever been involved in.

Actually, Professor Katsura seemed fairly impressed with their performance. Impressed enough to offer them a bonus along with a more permanent job. Apparently the disaster that this mission had been, had made him wary of trying to retrieve and neutralise ancient objects of darkness himself, and he thought it might be useful to have a team of professionals to deal with that sort of thing when it came up. (The fact that it came up often enough to warrant a dedicated team was something Raidou found fairly worrying actually.)

It was a pretty good deal, both he and Genma agreed. Steady pay, and an expense account, and Katsura promised them accommodation on the university campus, which was good because universities were neutral ground to all hidden villages and he and Genma were technically still on the run from Konoha. A secure base was definitely not something to sneeze at. Admittedly it meant they would be doing Katsura’s dirty work so they would probably have to deal with more of this shit, but on the other hand other people’s dirty work was basically what ninja _did,_ at least this dirty work came with a steady paycheque and seemed to provide reasonable entertainment for the kids, who had appearently thoroughly enjoyed the mission. Even Shikamaru who didn’t seem to get enthusiastic about anything had claimed the puzzles were fun. Raidou had made worse deals.

Besides, Katsura had offered them both honorary professorships, and the thought of rubbing that in Hatake’s stupid genius face if they ever ran into him was far too tempting to resist. That guy had always been far too smug about being the smartest person in the room.

...

By the time Kakashi senpai’s ship sailed into port, Tenzo and his adorable little assassins were comfortably settled on the docks waiting for them. Sai had managed to start three separate all out brawls while they were waiting, but Shin dealt with it neatly enough by dumping all challangers into the harbour and then _smiling_ at them. At least they understood how to look out for each other, even if the rest of their social skills were a bit… lacking. So they were waiting peacefully when the Calamity arrived.

Kakashi Senpai had been happy enough to see them. Tsunade less so, but then she was apparently an unwilling conscript and thus wasn’t especially happy with anything at the moment, no doubt she’d get over it. The rest of the Calamity’s rag tag crew were… actually they were pretty much what he expected from Senpai’s team selection strategies. Ridiculous, dysfunctional, and very very dangerous. Pretty much like Kakashi himself really. He especially liked Yashamaru, who had been having similar problems socialising his nephew Gaara as Tenzo had been having with Sai and Shin. It was so nice to have someone to share experiences with, and given that the whole crew seemed to have their own little tagalongs, there were plently of people to commiserate with.

Little Naruto was ridiculously adorable. Especially when he took one look at Tenzo’s adorable little assassins and dragged them off to play while babbling at about a hundred miles an hour about some trip he’d taken with his friend Lee to a secret monastery. It was even cuter when Tenzo saw all the kids together, running around playing ninja, and wreaking havoc on the ships normal operations. The other adults seemed to agree, judging by the looks on their faces. If Tenzo had been anyone else he might have been disturbed by the sight of so many terrifyingly overpowered, internationally wanted, murderous criminals, melting into puddles of sugary goo at the sight of a group of six and seven year olds plotting out a detailed battle campaign complete with supply lines, and informants amongst the enemy. As it was he was quite happily melting along with them. Especially since Sai’s new best friend Gaara seemed to not even notice his insults.

When the Calamity weighed anchor, Tenzo and his kids were on board.

…

In retrospect, they may have been a little overambitious. But Anko had just been so _excited_ to finally have an apprentice to pass on the noble art of pranking to, and so they might have got a bit carried away. It had just been so much _fun._ They’d hit the Anbu, they’d hit the jounin, they’d hit the chuunin, they’d even dared the wrath of Iruka and hit the academy. The whole village was out for their blood. Anko hadn’t had so much fun since Iruka betrayed the ancient order of pranksters and became a responsible adult. It was so good to have a partner in crime again.

And Kiba was everything she could have ever wanted in an apprentice. Enthusiastic, and fearless, and inventive, with a vicious streak that Anko gleefully nurtured, and they’d just kept pushing each other to new heights. She supposed it was inevitable that they’d overreach themselves.

She really hadn’t expected Danzo to react _that_ badly when they’d dyed his cats pink though. Yet more evidence that the man was going senile she supposed. It was really fairly harmless as their pranks went. The dye would have washed off in a couple of weeks, setting the Anbu on them was just excessive.

Still it had happened, and now they were lying low in the Forest of Death. It was a good hiding spot, no-one sane knew the forest as well as Anko did, but they couldn’t stay there forever. If only because there was only so much giant leech you could eat before you wound up with unfortunate vitamin deficiencies.

“Well kid. It looks like you and me are going to have to go on the run.” To his credit the kid didn’t argue.

“Cool. So where are we going Anko Neechan?” If anything he looked excited about their new adventure. She didn’t blame him. All the cool kids were getting kidnapped, it was no wonder he’d been feeling left out.

“The world is our oyster kiddo. I was thinking we should take up a life of crime and become international thieves?” She grinned, manically, in that way that made most people take a step back, but only seemed to make her young apprentice more excited. Score one for early acclimatisation.

“Why thieves?” He and his puppy tilted their heads in unison, showing their confusion. It was _adorable._ Anko was _definitely_ keeping them both.

“The same reason we do anything young grasshopper. To mess with people’s heads. Besides, thanks to Hatake the whole wandering mercenary thing has been done to death, and what is the first law of the most ancient and venerable order of pranksters.” She gave him her most serious and sage teacher’s look.

“Always be original.” Kiba responded in excitement. Anko smiled. It was so rewarding when students paid attention to their lessons. She could almost see why Iruka had become a sensei. It was just a shame he’d never taken on a pranking apprentice.

“That’s right grasshopper. Now, what do you say we get out of this bloody forest and head for the daimyo’s court?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, so Genma, Raidou and their ducklings have just been given a permanent job by professor Katsura who has decided he never wants to have to save the world from ancient relics in person ever again, so he might as well hire some professionals. Expect more ancient relics, trapped temples, and world ending plots for these guys.  
> Also the Akatsuki in this are like Indiana Jones nazis. They keep coming back and interfering for nefarious reasons.  
> Tenzo has joined the pirate crew.  
> Anko and Kiba have now left the village. Anko is totally planning to become Catwoman, or possibly Kaitou Kid. Something along those lines anyway, with Kiba as her apprentice.


	21. How to get ahead in politics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Nindiana Jones team have another run in with the Akatsuki, Kurenai has too much fun with politics, and Hizashi wears more sunglasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few months timeskip here. Genma and co have been on a few missions, and Anko has been gone from the village for long enough for Kurenai to get bored.

Genma felt he was actually getting pretty good at disabling pit traps. Practice made perfect he supposed, this was the sixth ancient ruin they’d found with… exotic security measures. Either the ancients had been considerably more paranoid than modern day civilians, or these were actually ancient _ninja_ temples. It would explain a lot of the mysterious and ominous doomsday weapons they’d retrieved from such locations anyway. Not that he was complaining of course. This was actually a fairly good job as mercenary work went. No self important VIP’s to bodyguard, no orphanages to burn down, no cats named Tora, just a few plain old psychotic death traps with a historical theme.

It was good for the kids, educational, a learn while you earn experience. Shikamaru was getting very good at solving riddles and Chouji was a natural at dealing with unfortunate obstacles the traditional way. (i.e. with excessive brute force), as for Ino well they never had to worry about the locals not telling them everything they needed to know that was for sure. They were working together more as a cohesive team, and it was obvious they genuinely enjoyd their wrk. Even Shikamaru, who as a classic Nara was likely to admit to enjoying work right about when hell froze over.

Yes, life as ninja archaeologists had been good to the kids, although letting Ino keep that ancient mystical whip as her primary weapon may have been a slight miscalculation. And it had been good to the adults as well. Genma especially liked the respect he got from being able to introduce himself as Professor Genma, while Raidou took the opportunity to attend any lecture that caught his interest when they were on campus between jobs. The general consensus was that they should have run off years ago.

Still there were always a few flies in the ointment, and the biggest flies of all came in pairs and wore _incredibly_ tacky cloaks. Genma wasn’t sure _why_ Akatsuki was so interested in ancient history, it didn’t seem to fit with their other main interests which mainly involved organised crime, and undermining wages. Still, everyone had to have a hobby, maybe for someone high up in the organisation, that hobby involved collecting doomsday weapons. Still, that wasn’t Genma’s problem, he had a job to do, a good job, and like hell was he going to let akatsuki interfere with a good thing by getting him fired and possibly destroying the world.

A few encounters had been enough to sort out an unspoken code of engagement, in the interests of all of them not being eaten by ancient temples of doom before they could get what they came for. (It was a risk. Genma had seen it happen to one of the graduate students Professor Katsura kept sending with them for “field experience”). Now they always pretended not to recognise each other until _after_ they’d found the target, and didn’t fight until the target had been removed from its resting place. After all, if they worked together, they were more likely to defeat the fiendishly sadistic ancient minds that created these places. They could always destroy each other _afterwards_ after all, and some of these ancient deathtraps were dangerous enough to threaten even high level ninja. (There had been one in the desert of Wind country that Genma _still_ suspected might have been sentient.)

So while Genma, and Raidou, and the kids, had all spotted the Akatsuki members right at the start of the expedition, because subtle the Akatsuki were not, they had elected to ignore them until they had located the dancing statue of Kar’Ash, an artefact of mysterious and devastating power. The location this time was Snow country, which was far too cold for Genma’s tastes, and had Shikamaru, and Ino with their far lower body mass shivering in their fur lined boots. Raidou and Chouji just stomped through the snow like they were born for such weather, bastards.

The Akatsuki looked at least as unimpressed by the weather as Genma felt, which was something he supposed. This time they’d sent the functionally immortal ones which would be fun, for a certain, very twisted value of fun. Hidan and Kukuzu he thought their names were. Anyway they fact that they had been sent said worrying things about what Akatsuki knew about the artefact they were trying to retrieve. The last time those two had been sent the artefact had release a corrosive wave of energy that killed everyone within a hundred foot radius when the wrong panels were pressed. Luckily he and his team had been out of range when the idiot grad student touched it. Genma resolved to be _very_ careful with this statue.

It took awhile. That was the trouble with fighting immortal people, they just wouldn’t stay down, no matter how many spike pits you dropped them into. Techincally Genma and his team had the numbers advantage, and since Raidou was holding the statue of unspecified doom the Akatsuki were reluctant to go all out against them. Functionally immortal wasn’t the same as completely immortal after all and it wasn’t the sort of thing people wanted to test to its limits. But still, the fact was they were up against a pair of mostly indestructible S ranked missing nin, and it was only due to a very improbable series of events that started with the statue glowing in alarming ways, and ended with Shikamaru dropping a mountain on the Akatsuki’s heads by throwing a rock to _just_ the right place to trigger an avalanche, that they managed to make it out of there with their prize.

Considering how often the Akatsuki seemed to be turning up on their missions, maybe they should be training more.

…

The jounin lounge was… embarassingly empty these days. Kurenai had never thought she’d miss that idiot Genma, but at least when he and his idiocy were around it was easy to forget just how many faces were missing. And he was _definitely_ an idiot, only a moron would steal the Jounin commander’s kid, even if plenty of sensible people had also left. She didn’t like the quiet though. Gai had of course been one of the earlier departures, and the silence in the break room had become increasingly pervasive. Anko was gone as well, and Kurenai really did miss Anko, and the chaos she’d always brought with her, like a bottle of wine to a party. Admittedly she didn’t blame Anko for leaving, it had only been a matter of time before her havoc causing tendencies got her into the kind of trouble it was best to bail on. By all accounts Danzo had been utterly furious about the pink cat incident.

It was a good thing Anko had seen fit to pass on her position as bookkeeper to a couple of chunin before she’d left though, or it would have been more than just Danzo chasing her. After all, hell hath no fury like a jounin who thinks they’ve been cheated out of their winnings.

It wasn’t just the conspicuous absences of course, it was the atmosphere in the village. The sense of tension as Danzo became ever more paranoid, had people watched ever more closely. It was the way that children no longer played in the streets for fear they’d be snatched by jounin or even, some whispered, a secret division of Anbu. Kurenai couldn’t really blame them. Not when she knew they weren’t wrong. That Root did exist, and jounin did steal children, and it appealed to the more twisted side of Kurenai’s sense of humour, that these days being recruited by your village was a worse fate than being kidnapped by a criminal.

She missed Asuma. Not because she thought he’d have been able to do much about any of this, he might have been the Sandaime’s son, but he had no head for politics, and Danzo had no respect for anyone who couldn’t play the game. No she missed him not because he’d have been particularly useful, but because she wanted him around. Wanted his steady, calm presence, the straightforward intelligence so different to her own twisting corkscrew of a mind. Also the sex. She definitely missed the sex.

But Asuma had left while the going was good, and Kurenai had been doing her best to play politics in his absence, inexperienced new made jounin that she was. But she was a genjutsu mistress and the village was short of jounin, and in that lay many possibilities. And because she was young and new, Danzo underestimated her, as only an old man can underestimate a young woman. After all playing with expectations was a kunoichi’s stock in trade, and Kurenai was a very good Kunoichi.

She’d done well, and while her colleagues ran away one after the other, she had only grown in influence, a spider at the heart of a thousand manipulations. Not enough never enough, but she’d done what she could to hold things together, to mitigate the damage Danzo was doing to her village, and it had been _so much fun_. There was a serious purpose of course, to protect the children that should have been safe to walk the streets of their village, that deserved to be protected. But really she’d be lying if she said she didn’t enjoy the process. After all, she was so very good at it.

She’d aligned herself with one clan and another, with the medics, with the administrators, she’d supported the triad of the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi as they locked down their control of all the things Danzo thought to unimportant to watch, she’d convinced Danzo to tell her far more than he should have about his work.

She’d overreached herself though. Danzo might be mad, and was certainly unstable, but he was also dangerously clever, cunning in that way that old ninja had to be to become old in the first place. She’d overreached and tripped the paranoia that had Danzo seeing enemies all around him. Although, she mused, was it truely paranoia when they really were all out to get you. Then again, when half the reason they were out to get you was in fact _because_ of said paranoia it did become rather a chicken and egg scenario. The line between madness and perceptiveness could in the end, be so very fine in the shadow world they lived in.

The cats though, there was no good explaination for. That was just pure old person crazy.

Yamanaka Inoichi had given her enough of a warning though. Enough of a warning to leave quickly and quietly before they came for her in the night. The request he had for her, well that was really just a bonus.

She stole into the Root training bunker under cover of darkness. Carefully weaving her subtle spider’s web over the inhabitants. They were good, for such small assassins, but they were young and she was better. There weren’t many, Danzo kept most of the training cells separate from each other, for fear one rogue jounin could sneak in and do, well exactly what she was doing actually. She spared a thought for the kids in other bunkers that she had no time to get to, but really, at the rate jounin were defecting, theyd probably all be taken soon.

Yamanaka Fuu, Akimichi Chouichi, Aburame Torune, her own little stolen genin team. It was Inoichi’s request, in exchange for the warning he’d given her but it wasn’t exactly a hardship. She always had wanted to be a jounin sensei. Maybe they could all infiltrate the Daimyo’s court together, it would be a fun training exercise, and a good opportunity to meet up with Asuma. She giggled as she put the little ducklings under a genjutsu that would convince them they were on a sanctioned mission until they were well clear of the village. She couldn’t wait for their reactions when they realised she’d tricked them. They might even try to kill her. It would just be so cute.

…

Hizashi was _good_ with his Byakugan, one of the best, so he was more than a mile away when he first detected Genma, Raidou and their stolen students. He did briefly consider introducing them to his darling, innocent little niece Hinata. After all, Genma might be a little… wild, but Raidou was sensible enough and it would be good for his little princess to have some friends her own age. He’d even gone so far as to check into a hotel in a nearby town, while he considered his approach.

Then they arrived in town and Hizashi changed his mind. Clearly he’d been about to make a terrible mistake. _Tomb Robbing._ Yes, Shinobi were thieves and assassins, but stealing from the dead, that was just… inappropriate, lacking in refinement, _tacky._ Not to mention the little Yamanaka girl was wearing crocodile skin everything. _Clearly_ not the sort of people the princess should be associating with.

He quickly donned sunglasses set no. 34, unobtrusive bodyguard, and put Hinata in set no. 8, daughter of minor official. They left town with the Bad Influences none the wiser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, Kurenai rescued some baby Roots as a favour to Inoichi, also because she wanted adorable murderous students. They are totally going to infiltrate the Daimyo's court in order to surprise Asuma. Because fake assassination attempts are obviously what everyone wants for their birthday.
> 
> For the record, Danzo is both crazy paranoid, and right. After all those who see enemies all around will eventually find them, and he's been seeing them a while.


	22. Seduction games

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yugao considers her future, Asuma has an unexpected run in with an old flame, Sakura infiltrates Orochimaru's lair, and Jiraiya is in over his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point the rookie nine are about six years old as is Gaara, team Gai are a year older than that, Kabuto, Shin, and Kurenai's menaces are about eight or nine, Haku and Shizune are the oldest of the kids at about ten or eleven.

Yugao had never expected to find herself contemplating parenthood. It wasn’t really the sort of thing that was expected of an elite jounin. Except that now it kind of was, by certain old clan traditions at least, what with the recent spate of kidnappings perpetrated by Konoha jounin. After all some clans viewed abduction as a perfectly reasonable way of becoming parents, especially if you murdered anyone else that might have a claim. Ninja clans were kind of fucked up.

Not many clans were very forthcoming about their pre-village policies on such things of course, no sense stirring up old troubles after all. But everyone knew the Senju and Uchiha had a child extermination policy for the majority of the warring clans era, and recent events had made it clear that both the Hatake and Inuzuka had held to the traditional shinobi principle of if it’s not nailed down you can take it, with the added proviso that if it’s a child too small to stab you it’s not nailed down.

At any rate it seemed certain old traditions were making a comeback. Not the child extermination thing thank god, but the other one, the one where if you kidnapped a kid and got away with it, it was yours. And since Raidou and Genma had made it clear stealing kids could be a couples thing, she’d been considering the idea more and more. Not that she had any such old clan traditions of course. She was well clear of that kind of inbred crazy at least, but even inbred crazies could have the right idea sometimes, and recently she’d been finding herself watching Hayate and contemplating what it would be like to raise a child with him. They’d be good parents she thought, they could teach the kid swords and knives and how to be utterly terrifying, and all forty three verses to “The blue eyed kunoichi” _with_ associated gestures. It would be fun, and she and Hayate could finally take the time to indulge their musical hobbies. Maybe they could be travelling musicians, in between assassinations.

She glanced speculatively at the pre-genin girl who was throwing an assortment of bladed objects at a training post with the kind of focus that was one creepy doujutsu away from making the target spontaneously combust. She was actually pretty good, just the sort of potential that could flourish under the tutelage of a pair of ex anbu. Yugito would have to track her home of course, just to make sure she didn’t end up in the kind of shit Genma and Raidou were in after kidnapping a full set of very influential clan heirs. She unlike some people, knew how to plan ahead.

Now, how to convince Hayate.

…

Sakura was having an absolutely wonderful day. She was so excited. They were in Tea country and at first she’d been sceptical, but once again her brilliant mentor had proved she had been wrong to doubt him. There was a Mad Scientist here, no doubt plotting nefarious and world ending plans. She could tell because she kept spotting ninja with extra body parts sewn on, and the last six villages they’d passed through had been terrorised by one form of unholy abomination of an escaped lab specimen or another. If those weren’t warning signs of mad laughter and violations of the laws of nature she didn’t know what were. Clearly she and her mentor were here to thwart his evil plans. Her mentor came up with the coolest training assignments.

Of course she had to impress him, so she’d sneaked off in the evening to try and locate the Mad Scientist’s Evil Lair. And she’d _found_ it, it was underground, and shiny, and large and minionlike people kept going in and out of it. Jiraiya shishou was going to be so _proud_ of her.

When she got back to the hotel room though, Jiraiya shishou wasn’t there. She was worried for a moment before she realised, he must have gone to follow up on a lead. She’d just have to wait for him to come back.

In her defence she did wait for a while. It was just, after a while she got a bit, bored, and then she started thinking about how impressed Jiraiya shishou would be if she managed to infiltrate the enemy’s lair all by herself. And so a couple of hours later saw her slipping quietly through the shadows of the underground base.

…

Kabuto had been having a perfectly ordinary day, writing up the results of his latest tests, when the alarms he’d set up on his personal lab went off. Irritation warred with curiousity in his mind as he he made his way over to investigate. The disruption of his routine was unwelcome of course, but he couldn’t help but be intrigued at the kind of person who would dare invade his sanctum. It wasn’t something that had happened to him before. After all, even those who hadn’t learned to be wary of him in his own right generally had the sense to fear Orochimaru’s reaction if they bothered him.

It took him a moment after entering the lab, to spot the intruder. An impressive feat considering the bright pink of her hair. She had real skill at blending with the shadows. She didn’t so much as flinch when he turned the light on, just met he gaze with a calculating kind of self assurance that Kabuto couldn’t help but find compelling. Maybe that was why he didn’t signal Orochimaru. Much as he adored his adopted dad, there was a part of him that wanted to keep this unlooked for discovery to himself, just for a while, just to see how it would all play out.

She was younger than he was, not by much, but a couple of years makes a big difference when you don’t have many to spare. It meant that he had a good couple of feet of height on her, and yet somehow, he didn’t feel at an advantage. Not when she smiled at him with that sly secretive smile that whispered of secrets and agendas he couldn’t predict. It was a strange kind of rush, to be challenged that way.

“Who are you?” He asked, careful to keep a safe enough distance. Young and small didn’t mean harmless after all. Some of the deadliest creatures in the world were smaller than his hand.

“Sakura. Haruno Sakura.” She replied. “And you?”

“I’m Kabuto. I live here.” She gave him a suspicious look.

“Are you one of the Mad Scientist’s Evil Minions.” Kabuto felt inexplicably offended by that statement. There really was no reason to care what she thought, but somehow he found himself arguing with her anyway.

“I most certainly am not. I am Orochimaru’s adopted son. I am _far_ more important than any mere minions.” He could see by the expressions flickering across her face that it was taking her a moment to slot that information into her world view, but soon enough her face cleared and settled into a look of slightly smug understanding.

“Ah” She nodded, “Of course. You’re the Dark Lord’s beautiful daughter who must be seduced by the hero to the side of good. That makes much more sense. You’re far too pretty to be a minion.” Kabuto wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or insulted by that, and Sakura didn’t give him time to decide before ducking in to plant a gentle kiss on his cheek. It was only then that he realised she had been slowly moving closer to him over the course of their conversation.

He would deny to his dying day that he blushed a little when she kissed him. He would also deny to his dying day how easily she was able to hit him with a sedative while he was distracted. As the darkness closed in all he could think was that next time, he would have to have a trap waiting for her. It wouldn’t do to let such a challenge go unanswered after all.

…

Jiraiya had not been having a good day. First he came back from scouting out the hotsprings to find a note from his young apprentice informing him she’d gone to infiltrate Orochimaru’s base. Seriously, did that child have no sense of self preservation? Then, when common decency forced him to infiltrate Orochimaru’s base himself in order to rescue her, he found himself captured by his former teammate.

Being captured by Orochimaru was never going to be fun, but somehow, over the last few years his old teammate had reached new levels of depravity. No longer content with experimenting on small children or kicking puppies, Orochimaru had crossed a whole new moral event horizon.

He may have sobbed a little as Orochimaru brough up the 750th powerpoint slide. He had been trained to resist torture, but tying him up and forcing him to sit in on Sound Village’s organisational committee meeting while Orochimaru gave a six hour multimedia presentation on fostering young talent within the organisation, complete with an unreasonable number of holiday photographs of him and his new son, was just inhumane. There were multi-page handouts, and evaluation forms. Jiraiya suspected Orochimaru might be punishing him for infiltrating at an inconvenient time.

Then, to top off an incredibly bad day with extra humiliation, he had to be rescued by his young apprentice, who had managed to successfully infiltrate Orochimaru’s base, steal his files, find Jiraiya, and seduce Orochimaru’s son, all by herself. Jiraiya wasn’t sure whether to be impressed, disturbed, or insecure. He settled for paternal anger, Sakura was definitely far too young to be seducing the heirs of supervillains, if that Kabuto showed his face around Jiraiya he’d regret ever laying a finger on his little student.

At least Sakura believed he’d just been biding his time to get information out of his nemesis. To be fair the presentation _had_ contained a lot of useful information. It was just that the price had been so horrifyingly high. There had been action statements, and actualization goals. Jiraiya wasn’t even sure what an actualisation goal _was,_ just that it was awful, and soul destroying, and he hadn’t known his former teammate could sink so low. In any case the hero worship was intact, which was a nice sop to his bruised ego. Even if he was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he might be in over his head on this one.

…

The rain fell grey and unrelenting on the dirty streets of the capital, washing away the filth of the day. Too bad it couldn’t wash away the crime and corruption that ran through the city’s foundations like rot. Asuma sighed and leaned back in his office chair as he took another drag of his cigarette. Another day, another helping of courtly intrigue, it was almost enough to make him wish he’d stayed in Konoha.

Almost.

But watching his village’s slow decay had been too much to bear. Too much, when he knew how his father would have wept seeing it, if he had still been able to understand what was happening. Sarutobi Hiruzen might not have been the world’s best father, but he had loved his village, and most days Asuma thought it would probably have been kinder for him to have died the day of the Kyuubi attack, rather than left as a figurehead to the fall of that same village. It was one of life’s great cruelties and Asuma cared enough for his father that he couldn’t bring himself to watch.

The court might have been rotten to the core, but at least in the capital there were no memories waiting to assault him down every alleyway, no disappointment at how broken things had become. The capital was poison, but there was an honesty to it. People knew what to expect, and what they expected was nothing, no justice, no honour, no pretence at kindness. It was easier, than watching what Konoha had become, the corrupted hopes, and failed dreams.

And here, no-one expected him to live up to his father’s legend, or halt his disintegration. Life in Konoha had been a life always in his father’s shadow, the good and the bad, until there was nothing of himself that he could call his own. Out here, his actions were his own, for what it was worth.

He breathed in the smoke, let it swirl through his lungs, and considered asking his young apprentice to fetch him a drink. God knew there wasn’t much else to do on an off day like this, not unless he felt like networking with the unending parade of sycophants that plagued the Daimyo’s court like locusts, and he wasn’t that far gone yet. He was on the verge of calling to Neiji to open the liquor cabinet when… She walked in.

Neiji tried to stop her, poor boy was still too hung up on protocol, but talented as he was Neiji was years too young and green to stop the kind of trouble she was. She sauntered in with long dark hair, and blood red eyes, the kind of predatory grace that screamed Kunoichi, and the kind of smile that screamed trouble. He knew from the moment he laid eyes on her that his day was about to go to hell, so he finished his cigarette before acknowledging her presence.

“Kurenai. To what to I owe the _distinctly_ unexpected pleasure?” She rolled her eyes as she folded herself gracefully onto the chair in front of his desk, every movement a carefully deliberately casual performance. Asuma couldn’t help but be impressed.

“I can’t just stop by to see an old friend”, she asked, with a wide eyed pretence at hurt. Asuma raised a cynical eyebrow.

“You’re a missing nin Kurenai. I’m assuming it was something more significant than a desire to remenice that led you to my doorstep.” Out the corner of his eye Asuma could see Neiji’s frame tense with the revelation, poised for combat. The boy really needed to work on his tells. In any case there was no need. If Kurenai wanted him dead, she wouldn’t be meeting him face to face. Kurenai held the moment for dramatic effect, but after a few breaths of silence she continued.

“Well I was in the neighbourhood, and I heard there was a plot to kill the Daimyo. And, being a good friend, I thought it was the sort of thing you’d want to know.” Yep, Asuma had been right. His day was definitely about to go to hell. If only she didn’t look so damn good in those heels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure where the very pg Kabuto/Sakura came from but now Kabuto is somehow the bad bond girl in Sakura's development arc. It kind of works as a relationship, if you think about it. They're both smart, and theory oriented, and more subtle than is standard in the Naruto world.  
> Bear in mind Sakura is six and Kabuto is eight, holding hands and a kiss on the cheek is as far as any of it will go for quite some time. It's all very cute and innocent. Aside from the mad science, and the spying, and the hammy death traps, and Jiraiya's bad influence, and Orochimaru's entirely different bad influence.  
> Yes Asuma and Kurenai's thread is now officially a noir story. I couldn't resist.  
> And yes Yugao and Hayate will be stealing Tenten soon.  
> By the way i'm sorry it's been so long, I kind of hit a wall with this story for a while. But it's back now, and I've got the outlines for the next few chapters nailed down.

**Author's Note:**

> Please note, I do not condone reading pornography to small children in any way shape or form. Kakashi just has no idea it's inappropriate. On account of having issues, and a warped perspective on the world. He honestly just thinks Icha icha is great literature. Yes this will end up being a running joke.
> 
> Updates on this one will probably be slow, I have too many other fics on the go.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Wolf and cub fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13021260) by [suarhnir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suarhnir/pseuds/suarhnir)




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